Bird Delivers Abrams' Goods

Rating: Null/10 (1 February 2012)

Brad Bird, oh you masterful animator. You made me cry with Iron Giant, grip the edge of my seat watching The Incredibles, and laugh raucously with the jokes of Rattatouille. Now on to live action, rewarded with the cream of the money crop – the incredibly successful Tom Cruise/Mission Impossible franchise. Bird has the chance to show that animation isn't his only gig.
Mission: Impossible 4 opens up with a mission gone wrong and a fun, brutal prison escape that (re)introduces the cast of characters. Once we get that nonsense out of the way – on to the mission. Using high tech gadgetry, fast thinking, and smooth talking, the crack team manages to take down a man set to destroy they world. Once again, the team makes it look easy except
They didn't. Everything went wrong – "Red is Dead" – gadgets broke, team members made mistakes, and nothing went quite as planned. It ended up being a major miracle that anything got done at all. It was sort of strange seeing this sort of plot and character development out of a normally polished action series, but I'll give the credit to Brad Bird. Previous Bird films felt very realistic, even when the subject was talking rats in a French kitchen. He has a knack for bringing real issues and conflicts in to otherwise insanely outlandish stories. Maybe I'm giving him too much credit, but Ep. 4 was different enough from most action movies to make me thing J.J. Abrams gave Bird a good bit of leeway in film making.
Beyond the nice bits of conflict, it was very nice film making. I could actually tell who was who and what was going where during action scenes. Smooth camera movement took precedence over shaky cam and "gritty" shooting styles. Just how I like it. Top it off with some gutwrenching sound effects and you've got a complete film.
Ghost Protocol wasn't perfect by any means. It had a lot of product placement, some goofy dialog, could have used a trim here and there but it was probably one of the more enjoyable films I saw in 2011. I don't often see movies twice, but when I do, it would be this one.