Brad Bird is best known for directing critically acclaimed animated movies, such as “The Iron Giant” and Disney/Pixar’s “The Incredibles” and “Ratatouille” (both which won him Oscars). He ventures into live-action for the first time with “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol”, the fourth installment of the series that began 15 years ago. And much like the franchise, “Ghost Protocol” is stretched-out way too long.
Tom Cruise is back as Ethan Hunt. At the start of the film he escapes from prison, thanks to two of his fellow IMF agents (played by Simon Pegg and Paula Patton). They are on their own for a new mission (which they choose to accept) to prevent a the start of a nuclear war. This involves keeping the codes to fire nuclear missiles out of the hands of the wrong people. Along the way the team picks-up a 4th member (Jeremy Renner), who may or may not be who he says he is.
While the mission is pretty simple, the script complicates things in order to include trips to exotic locations (including Dubai and India), several wild action scenes (some better than others), and ton of characters and a lot of dialogue. In fact everyone in this movie spends more time talking about what they’re going to do than actually doing it. This is one of the things that causes “M:I4” to drag and hold-down the fun level. And the movies best sequence – Cruise climbing-up and racing down the outside of the tallest building in the world could have been jaw-dropping if Paramount hadn’t used it as it’s main marketing tool for the movie.
Another problem is with the dialogue: the characters aren’t talking to each other, they’re delivering lines. Normally, in entertaining action movies you can ignore the talking and just enjoy the ride, but that’s “not possible” here because the talking dominates the film. And I prefer Cruise’s character in last year’s “Knight and Day” to Ethan Hunt, who is way too serious and therefore has very little personality.
Bird does a nice job directing the action scenes. His experience with “The Incredibles” I’m sure helped him tremendously. “M:I4” looks good, but the weak story (the writers couldn’t come-up with something better than preventing a nuclear war between US and Russia? In 2011!) and underwhelming special effects at times really hurt.
“Mission: Impossible – Ghost Proctol” is rated PG-13 for loads of action-violence and some adult language. It’s appropriate for kids 12 and up. Fans of the series should enjoy it (many are saying it’s the best of them all), but otherwise you’ll likely find it close to impossible to rank this as one of your favorites of the action/spy genre.
On “The Official Kid Critic Report Card”, “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol” gets an C.