Cruise Month - Mini Review: Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol

Once again, it’s Cruise Month

And it’s time to look at the final Mission: Impossible movie (at least until Rogue Nation comes out) Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol.

In the director’s seat this time is Brad Bird, known for several other classics including the Incredibles (an amazing film that serves as commentary on superheroes as well as a great superhero movie in its own right) and the Iron Giant

This was his first venture into live action, with his latest stint being Disney’s Tomorrowland with George Clooney as the star. I have not watched this movie, and unfortunately I probably won’t be owing to time and money constraints.

Paula Wagner isn’t among the producers of the movie (although that might be a wikipedia glitch), despite Cruise/Wagner productions still being behind it. Instead we have the director of the previous film, J J Abrams, Cruise himself and Bryan Burk, a frequent co-collaborator with Abrams.

No real production problems with this one, only noting that this is the first of the movies to be shot in IMAX. Critically and commercially successful this movie made over $600m on its $145m budget, becoming the best received in the franchise.

So, with further ado, let’s dive in

When a mission goes horribly wrong Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is a wanted man, and must work to uncover the true villains and clear his… Wait, that’s the first movie, let’s try again. When a mission goes horribly wrong Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is a wanted man, and must work to uncover the true villains and clear his… Wait, wait, that’s the third movie, or at least the second half of it. One more time. When a mission goes horribly wrong Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is a wanted man, and must work to uncover the true villains and clear his name.

Is it weird that every time they pull the same plot they get somehow better at it. Ghost Protocol despite its unpromising title is without a doubt the best of the franchise.

OK, time for a proper synopsis. Ethan Hunt is broken out of prison because of events that we don’t know about yet by agents Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg) and Jane Carter (Paula Patton) one of their fellow agents had been tasked with intercepting a package containing nuclear launch codes and was assassinated by Sabine Moreau (Léa Seydoux) their mission was to infiltrate the Russian Kremlin and identify the buyer of the codes, codenamed Cobalt.

Their mission goes wrong when someone piggybacks their frequency and alerts Russian authorities to a bomb which goes off in the place. The entire IMF is disavowed following that incident. The team is joined by William Brandt (Jeremy Renner) in their quest to intercept the launch codes and evoke a nuclear war.

I’ve already said it but I’ll say it again. Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol is the best Mission: Impossible Movie yet. The pacing is great and better yet the supporting agents have actual character arcs, something I argued was missing in M:I:3. Benji returns to the screen (you know, he’s only the second supporting character to provide a recurring role in the franchise) having been promoted to a field agent, and his banter provides moments of with when the situation seems dire, although as before he can come across as a tad annoying.

The issue is, since his skills are in computing, same as Luther; Luther’s relegated to only a cameo role at the end. I don’t know what the behind the scene’s reason is for this but I didn’t miss him. His character rarely had much character to him.

Jeremy Rayner does a decent job as agent Brandt (questioning some of the weird logic of the franchise at the beginning was a great comedic moment) it’s clear he’s hiding something, a level of guilt for the supposed death of Hunt’s wife. (Giving Hunt a wife was writing yourself into a corner anyway, I’m kinda glad they went this route) Hunt reveals at the end that her death and the subsequent murder of 6 Serbian Nationals was all staged in order to get Hunt into the prison we see him at in the beginning. It was nice that at the end he came clean about it and Hunt told him the truth. I’m glad he’s coming back for the next movie

Agent Carter

No not that Agent Carter! Agent Carter has a desire for revenge on Sabine, after the previously aforementioned murder. It makes the fights more personal especially since Hunt had given a no-kill order in order to determine intel.

If there’s a negative to this it’s the main villain, he’s some sort of evolutionist who says that Nuclear War would spark the next stage in evolution. He’s clever, crafty and can outwit agents, but that’s pretty much every villain in the franchise. We didn’t know enough about him to make him interesting. Something I hope they worked on in the movie coming soon

Rating 80/100

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Images used in this review are from Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol and Marvel's Agent Carter and belong to their respective owners. All images in this review are subject to fair use.