Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol (2011)

Dir:- Brad Bird

Starr:- Tom Cruise, Jeremy Renner, Michael Nyqvist, Paula Patton, Simon Pegg, Léa Seydoux, Anil Kapoor

Scr:- Josh Applebaum, André Nemec

DOP:- Robert Elswit

Producer(s):- J.J. Abrams, Bryan Burk, Tom Cruise

Note:- This film was seen as part of a five film movie marathon I participated in during my Xmas break. You can find an initial article about this on the following link. Be advised however, that I have since worked out that I had not seen MI3 and therefore erroneously made reference to the weakness of that particular instalment of the franchise, when I was actually referring to MI2.Spoilers Alert!

If ever there was a film that reflected the degree of control that a producer can flex in Hollywood, then it would be Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol. Tom Cruise has done little of substance since his last outing as Ethan Hunt, whilst garnering all kinds of unwanted media exposure. After the execrable Knight and Day in 2010, his acting career was in need of just the kind of box-office boost that a holiday banker like the MI franchise should present. As the key producer presence on the film it was abundantly clear that Cruise wasn’t taking any chances when he sought to get the movie pulled from a potential summer blockbuster dogfight to a festive season home run. On top of that Cruise has once again acquitted the franchise with a sparkling supporting cast and an exciting directorial choice. Into the director’s chair comes Pixar guru Brad Bird, whilst joining the cast for this particularly bleak outing are a veritable United Nations of talent in the form of Jeremy Renner, Paula Patton, Michael Nyqvist, Anil Kapoor and Léa Seydoux.

Things kick off in impressive fashion with Cruise being viewed obliquely as a prisoner in a Russian maximum-security penitentiary (Bird dazzles with a tense slow reveal of Ethan Hunt’s whereabouts), whom a team of MI officers, including Brit fanboy superstar Simon Pegg in for a second tour of duty, are attempting to break out. The way in which Pegg seizes control of the prison security systems and then manages to use them to channel the energies of a rioting prison population to inadvertently assist the escape of Hunt and a fellow prisoner Bogdan (Miraj Grbic) makes for a spellbinding and action packed opening, that is utterly in-keeping with the flavour of the original TV series. Bird then manages to bring together two disparate plot strands fairly quickly, culminating in an epic and typically convoluted hotel ruse, played out in, and on, the world’s tallest building in Dubai.

I told them to check if the lifts were working before ordering from Domino's - but did they listen?

The two plot strands revolve around Léa Seydoux’s ice-cold assassin Sabine Moreau and Michael Nyqvist’s apocalypse embracing atomic physicist Kurt Hendricks. Moreau has dispatched Trevor Hanaway (Josh Holloway) an MI agent who was on the tail of a nuclear terrorist plot. Hanaway was also a love interest for Jane Carter (Paula Patton) the latest recruit to Hunt’s band of intrepid agents. Rather than overegg the emotional elements at play in this plotline, Bird actually does a pretty good job of underplaying things to the point that when Carter actually has a chance to off Moreau it doesn’t feel overly contrived that she might wrestle with her professionalism momentarily. The second plot strand develops from the information that Hunt and Pegg’s Benji Dunn unearth in the Kremlin, shortly before the monumental structure is levelled in a meticulously rendered CGI bomb blast. This information points toward Kurt Hendricks being the ruthless terrorist mastermind ‘Cobalt’, and in fact it is Hendricks who has instigated this assault on Russia’s military heartland. MI:GP is particularly effective in mixing scenes of almost slapstick humour involving the geeky gadgetry of Benji Dunn (such as the projected image work that gets them through the second wave of Kremlin security, and plays out like a scene from a Chaplin movie) with sequences of hair-raising tension, involving insanely extreme Cruise stuntwork (such as running down the outside of the Burj Khalifa attached to a thin safety harness). Both Nyqvist and Séydoux, although appearing in only a small fraction of the film’s running time, manage to offer a nice counterpoint to the camaraderie and giddy bonhomie of the MI team’s work. They are truly chilling characters with a resolute determination to get what they want and in the gimlet-eyed Nyqvist MI:GP has a master villain to rival Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s in the third outing of the franchise.

Jeremy Renner, as William Brandt, is about to be turned into human OJ. Pulped of course.

The absolute ace in the hole for this particular installment is the enlistment of Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker) as the analyst with a dark secret, William Brandt. Brandt is brought into Cruise’s team under dubious circumstances after the IMF Secretary (Tom Wilkinson) is assassinated in front of Hunt and Brandt, moments after having informed Ethan that the agency has initiated the eponymous ‘Ghost Protocol’, effectively disavowing the existence of the agency and the activities and whereabouts of any of their agents. It is this sudden ‘outlaw’ status, combined with Brandt’s own hidden motives that makes MI:GP such a bitter, dark and gripping entry into the series. Renner is an exceptionally convincing actor in almost any role he inhabits and here his edginess is suitably unsettling, leaving the viewer constantly doubting Brandt’s intentions. With Cruise looking as cynical, hungry and sinewy as he ever has, the movie really operates around the blackest of hearts, with Simon Pegg’s character providing the necessary light relief. At the end of the film it is Renner and Cruise, both pushing each other on in the acting stakes, that make a potentially maudlin scene a fitting dramatic coda.

With the spy-thriller action film effectively redefined by the Matt Damon-starring Bourne franchise, Cruise and Bird have done an excellent job of incorporating many of the pseudo-realist tricks from the Bourne movies (Cruise really does look like he endures some suffering in the line of duty, whilst the logistics of the film seem much more rigorous than in previous outings), whilst simultaneously upping the ‘cool’ style factor on the latest Bond films. Like the 007 franchise Cruise has brought a car manufacturer onboard as MI:GP’s major sponsor, with BMW able to place their latest prototype models into the impressive sandstorm chase sequence, whilst also allowing one of their factories to serve as the battleground for the final confrontation between Hendricks and Hunt. This commercial sponsorship barely interferes with the movies narrative and in fact just adds further bling to the team’s grand world tour. It is highly unlikely that after four films an action franchise can still provide the necessary bang for its buck, but Cruise has ensured that MI:GP bucks the trend and makes for a fiercely enjoyable two hours of escapist cinema.

Pros

• Cruise clearly has a point to prove and has made sure that the film comes wrapped up in the highest of production values.
• The darker, murkier, more morally ambiguous approach to drama in this installment makes it a truly edgy and intense affair.
• The outlandishness of some of the action set pieces simply takes the breath away and must be seen on the big screen.

Cons

• As with almost all MI films the plot does get a little frayed around the edges, particularly in the final third, but then who really cares about plot.
• Ving Rhames brief appearance at the film’s end was wholly unnecessary, although probably sets him up for a return to action in MI5.
• The Russian detective plotline could have been easily disposed of as it offered little to the drama.

Rating:- 6/10