Film Diary 2011: Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (From The Argus)

Film Diary 2011: Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol

11:14am Friday 30th December 2011

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Animation director Brad Bird makes a peculiar choice for his live-action debut with this fourth installment of the long-running Mission: Impossible franchise. It's been a little over fifteen years since Brian De Palma's wonderful, white-knuckle first installment and since then the road has been a little rocky for these twisty techno thrillers.

John Woo's sequel in 2000 was a massive box office success, but was a stylistic mess with a dull narrative and flacid set pieces, which perhaps explains why it took a further six years for the J. J. Abrams to make his feature-film debut helming the third film, one which smartly began to flesh out the character of Ethan Hunt, giving the story a much needed emotional hook and a great villain in the shape of Philip Seymour Hoffman's Owen Davian. Now, Bird - with J. J. Abrams producing - has created the first sequel that really doffs the cap to both the first and third films, rightfully ignoring Woo's second. If anything though it does further prove a theory I had that the length of Tom Cruise's hair is directly related to the quality of the film, the longer it is the worse the film is, you see, it was really short on the first one and quite short on the third, here it's a little long, but nowhere near as long as it was on the second film.

Anyway, if only all films were easily reviewed in relation to the lead actor's barnet, though it would - if the same criteria applied - mean that Vin Diesel has had a near flawless run of masterpieces.

Back on point, Bird has taken his animation experience (directing the Pixar classic The Incredibles, along with Ratatouille and The Iron Giant) and brought that larger-than-life sensibility squarely into the real world, the audience is required, even moreso than any other M:I film thus far, to make a few leaps of technological faith, but you are rewarded with a dizzying, entertaining slice of summer blockbusting fun albeit released in the winter. Like De Palma and Abrams before him Bird keeps the film moving from set-piece to set-piece with brief pauses for a little character work and some exposition dotted in between, for the most part though it's a chain of expertly handled action sequences, the most thrilling being a vertigo inducing ascent and descent on the tallest building in Dubai and a nifty scuffle at the film's finale.

Despite having a more 'team' orientated storyline than ever before, with each of the four IMF agents (Paula Patton, Simon Pegg and Jeremy Renner) even getting a little bit of characterisation and a story arc, the film is a reminder at just what a valuable Hollywood leading man Tom Cruise is, just as he did on M:I 3, he gets to brood, simmer, rage, take a pummeling, hurl himself about making sure the audience knows it's actually him performing those stunts, and then occasionally crack that million dollar smile. He may not be the greatest actor who ever lived (though he's delivered many fine performances throughout his career) but he's undoubtedly one of the finest showmen in the industry, and one who always puts the effort in when it comes to giving the audience bang for their buck.

Ultimately, none of the Mission: Impossible films have ever really amounted to much more than popcorn munching thrills and spills, De Palma's debut entry remains the most nail biting and benefits from a strong narrative by Chinatown scribe Robert Towne, Woo's sequel remains the worst (though it did have a great parody made of it starring Cruise, Woo and Ben Stiller called Mission: Improbable), Abrams' brought the franchise back on the track with his relentless threequel, and Bird is the first director to actually continue the series rather than simply reimagine it and manages to deliver a fun, pacy and consistently entertaining piece of - sadly slightly forgettable - fluff.

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