Fun, lots of tension, and some good performances really sell this

Rating: 7/10 (13 July 2015)

*WARNING CONTAINS SPOILERS* Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, the fourth M:I movie, combines a lot of the good elements of the previous three movies. There's a smart story, with the on-the-run aspect that we've had so many times in this series, but this one does it probably the best. They really do have some weaknesses, they don't have all the resources the usually do. One thing that bumped this movie up a few points is that the plans the heroes lay don't actually work, they have to improvise, lots of bad stuff happens, and we get to see Ethan Hunt and crew come up with new plans on the fly. That was really fun to see, especially since that hadn't happened before in the M:I series. I thought the main cast gave really strong performances, as well. Not like Oscar winning performances, but for a spy-action movie these performances were pretty good. Out of all four of the movies, this was the movie where Cruise gave the best performance, and Jeremy Renner was a nice addition as well. And then, there's the stunt. The stunt to end all stunts, the most famous stunt ever. I am of course, talking about Tom Cruise climbing up the side of the building. I don't know all the technical stuff about how they shot it, and I don't want to, what I do know is that it looks amazing. This will sound fake, but this is 100% true. My hands were sweating throughout this entire scene. I don't know why, I mean, I know he won't die, but still, it's just like... yeah. Probably one of the tensest scenes in any movie ever. There's some good action here, that's just y'know, standard spy martial arts kind of fighting, but what really makes this movie so exciting was all the tension. I already mentioned the climb, but there's also the finale, where they're trying to stop a nuke from blowing up the U.S., and they're just in four different places, trying to stop all these things from happening. For example, Cruise is trying to get a case back to stop the missile, and it keeps getting shifted onto different platforms going up and down, while he and the villain fight to get it. Eventually the villain gets it, and leaps to his death with it. The whole scene is really tense, and the conclusion is just like... oh no, how...? So in the end, I had a lot of fun with this movie, it's action packed, very suspenseful, has great acting, and even has a pretty good story. Like every other M:I movie, aside from the third one, this has a pretty weak villain, but aside from that, this movie is really good.