Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol

Tom Cruise is back for the latest installment of the Mission Impossible franchise, reprising his role as Ethan Hunt top agent for the IMF (Impossible Mission Force). I’ve had mixed opinions on this franchise the original was a solid movie, the second was terrible and the third was really good. This kind of seemed like overkill to make a fourth movie but I checked it out anyway…..

JJ Abrams is the only person crazy enough to work with Tom Cruise these days so as the film open Lost fans were given a bonus by a cameo by Josh Hollaway(Sawyer). After a short scene we are shown that Ethan(Cruise) is being held in a russian prison and Benji (Simon Pegg) has come to break him out. After some fighting and Ethan is extracted from the prison and realizes that things must be in diar straights if he has been broke out of prison. Ethan is given a mission to stop a terrorist he has chased before named Cobalt. Cobalt is a mysterious target that Ethan chased for years but never got close to. The path to Cobalt leads them  deep into the russian government at the Kremlin.

We always get to see some pretty cool gadgets in the MI movies and this one didn’t disappoint including a screen that simulated a hall to make the bad guys think they were still looking down the same hall. This allows Ethan to slip into a room to steal what they are after. You also get to see Cruise impersonating a russian general and Benji super excited to be in the field and helping. Their Mission at the Kremlin goes awry as they are set up and a bomb explodes pointing all blame at America.

Ethan’s team is disavowed by the government but not before “The Secretary” can give him a mission to solve this case once and for all and stop Cobalt from launching a nuke and ultimately starting a nuclear war. It’s at this time we are introduced to Jeremy Renner’s character of Brandt a lead analyst for the secretary.  Brandt turns out to be a lot more than just an analyst as he shows signs of being quite capable in the field. Even though they manage to work together there is an underlying tension between Brandt and Ethan the whole time as Ethan can tell there is something Brandt is withholding. We later find out that Brandt was in charge of protection for Ethan’s wife when she got killed , causing Ethan to seek out the Croatian hit squad and kill six men which in turn landed him in the russian prison at the beginning of the movie.

The team heads to Dubai where we get to see a crazy scene where Ethan scales the side of the tallest building in the world with nothing but some crazy mechanically adhesive gloves that don’t really work which makes it really sketchy! The pure craziness of this scene and how it looked was probably the highlight of this movie for me.  We also get to see about a five-minute scene of Tom Cruise sprinting while a sand storm is chasing him. ( Weird I know but I promise it happens!) Ethan also gets hit by a car at 70 or 80 miles an hour and rolls off the back and holds on in a very realistic moment of action.  The team fails again in Dubai but Ethan rallies the troops and they head to Mumbai , India for their last shot at Cobalt.

In Mumbai we get to see more crazy gadgets and action including Brandt being held suspended in air by a magnet due to some sort of magnetic suit he was wearing. All hope seems lost when Cobalt is able to execute a nuclear strike but Ethan realizes that they can steal override the warhead if they can catch up to Cobalt.  It all comes down to Ethan and Cobalt fighting over the launch device.  In a last gasp effort Ethan crashes a car a hundred feet to the ground and crawls out and the IMF team is able to disable the warhead just as it is about to land vaporizing everyone. The movie wraps up with a cameo by the great Ving Rhames and the team meeting together one last time. Ethan gives praise to each team member and extends an invitation to each to continue working together by giving them phones with new missions on them. Brandt overcome with the guilt of his secret refuses and divulges the information to Ethan. It’s then when we learn that Ethan checked out Brandt and knew he was there.  Ethan then shares with Brandt that in fact he staged his wife’s death so that she could be free , because he knew if they were together she would never be safe. We then see Michelle Monaghan who played Julia, Ethan’s wife in MI3. Brandt accepts the phone and being a part of Ethan’s team and then the final moment of the movie is Julia seeing that Ethan is looking in on her from a far.

All in All MI4 is a pretty solid action movie. For me it kind of falls in line with the Fast and Furious’s of the world if you’re a movie snob who has to see superior acting in every movie you go to , this isn’t the movie for you.  If your like me and you can go watch a movie for the pure entertainment value of some good action and explosions then you will enjoy this. The only thing that really bugged me about it was the fact that their were at least 2 maybe more scenes where it was just Tom Cruise sprinting. Jeremy Renner was solid as he is in just about everything he does these days.  Simon Pegg was really good as Benji providing a comedic presence to the movie. I will say I would have liked to have seen a solid well-known actor playing the villain like Phillip Seymour Hoffman in MI3.  I would say MI:Ghost Protocol is definitely worth a watch but I would also say that I hope this is the last time we see Ethan Hunt and this franchise because 4 movies is enough.

~Big Dawg