Entertaining but not without flaw

Rating: 7/10 (22 June 2014)

You know, as ridiculous as the first Misison Impossible was, it maintained one foot in seriousness at all times. Ghost Protocol on the other hand sometimes acts like a parody of itself, of spy movies in general. The first 10 Minutes in particular gave a wrong impression of the rest of the film.
As I was watching the first scene, I thought that it was going to be revealed that this is all a movie set and the guy running is an actor and then the scene will segue its way to the real action and the real main character. I was especially convinced of this when at the end of the scene there was a smart phone with a full-screen picture of a woman with the word "ASSASSIN" typed over it in huge font, all caps. I thought someone will now say "Cut!" and later the real characters will drive through the set because they are in a high speed chase through the city or something. But NO! The first scene was part of the movie! These were actual characters we are supposed to believe in! .........Hahahahaha! The movie does this a number of times, but thankfully most of the humour is intentional, though there may be just a little too much of it. One of the main characters is played by Simon Pegg who is a comedy actor and he acts as a comedy relief character in this, but he is also very much in the foreground taking up just as much time as Tom Cruise's main character. It doesn't hurt the movie, it's just a different tone than the one I expect from these films.
The main premise is a most cliché and unimaginative ever. Something nuclear weapons, crazy bad guy. In fact, anytime any subplots or background story raised their heads, any time the film tried to be emotional, it was a letdown. But who cares? It's not important. Everything plot related is just an excuse for a particular scene and those scenes are well worth it.
The movie looks really impressive. The technology used by the spies looked very cool, as it usually does in Mission Impossible movies. The action and the locations where the action takes place are diverse, from Russian basements to Middle Eastern skyscrapers. Acrobatics are great and Tom Cruise looks in good shape performing them.
Tom Cruise gives it their best as usual. A cool addition to the cast is the Russian actor Andrei Mashkov, who I am really glad is still active in movies, but the movie did not give him much to do and he could have just as easily been cut out altogether. The bad guy is a real disappointment though. There is no strong villain involved, just a guy who appears on screen every now and then, doing his villain stuff, only saying a word or two.
MI Ghost Protocol is a technically very effective action movie, but shallowness of story, a weak villain and a few corny scenes prevent it from reaching higher. If you are in it for good action and nothing else though then it comes highly recommended.