What is to be said about the new Mission: Impossible movie? It’s the fourth since the first adaptation from the 1960s TV series in 1996; it is becoming Tom Cruise’s most reliable franchise, wheeled out every few years, and likely to continue until Cruise can no longer run in a straight line.
In a remarkable innovation, and considering that the title already has a superfluous colon in it, the fourth instalment has a subtitle, so it’s Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol.
The “ghost protocol” of the title is what is invoked when the Kremlin gets bombed and Cruise’s secret agent, Ethan Hunt, is blamed. This means that the United States has to disown the IMF, the super-secret agency Hunt works for — note that that is not the International Monetary Fund, which lacks agents of such extraordinary physical skills, and probably doesn’t have as much money as would be needed for all this globetrotting and amazing technology. What IMF does, in fact, stand for in this context I don’t recall.
The movie opens with Hunt being busted out of a Russian jail, and it’s a decent action sequence. Then it’s into the Kremlin, with Hunt and his computer guy (played by Simon Pegg) seeking an important file; this all goes wrong, the bombing follows, and next thing Hunt and his three new sidekicks are deemed “rogue” — and they have to prove their innocence, find and do away with the villain, prevent global disaster, and so forth.
The previous instalment of Mission: Impossible was directed by JJ Abrams, and mostly what I recall is that it was highly saturated in terms of colour, that Cruise did a lot of running hither and thither, and the plot was negligible. Ghost Protocol is less saturated in colour, being fairly dark and/or gritty overall, and Cruise only gets one scene in which he can do that patented carrot-up-the-arse sprint of his for any length of time. The plot, in number four, may even make sense — it is, at least, placed in the foreground with some confidence.
Squinty intensity
Hunt’s new sidekicks are played by Paula Patton, Jeremy Renner and Simon Pegg. These are his fellow secret agents for this caper. Well, Pegg appeared before in the third Mission: Impossible, or so we’re told (I don’t remember), and here his role as nerdy-genius computer guy has been expanded. Pegg brings what humour there is to this episode, dominated as it is by the action and by Cruise’s squinty stare of intense … er, intensity.
The action, which you could call the core content here, is pretty good. But it does begin to pall and to bore as the movie reaches the hour-and-a-half mark and then goes pounding beyond it, submitting to the credits only after well over two hours have passed. The big production number here has Hunt using special sticky-magnetic-electronic gloves to climb up the outside of the tallest building in the world (a hotel in Dubai), and it works fine, but after that it feels like the rest of the action is trying hard to catch up and maintain momentum.
Or perhaps it was just that I, as a viewer unconcerned about feeling I got my money’s worth and thus desirous of more than two hours of such action, thought it could have wrapped itself up sooner. For me at least, Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol felt like one of those meals you get at a Californian restaurant, where the plate is piled high with food, more than you want and more than you can eat, unless you’re trained in the ways of American over-consumption. It looks generous on the plate, though much will be thrown away; it’s there so that when you leave, not so much satisfied as bloated, you can feel you’ve spent your money well. Bon appetit.