And he won't back down

Rating: 8/10 (4 January 2012)

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol was essentially Mission: Impossible - Resurrect Tom Cruise and because of critical praise and the box office returns it currently has it seems to be mission accomplished.
After a missions goes wrong in Budapest the IMF has to break Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) out from a Russian prison because they had lost Russian nuclear mission codes and need to get information about nuclear extremist "Cobalt" from the Kremlin. But when the IMF team are famed for bombing the Kremlin by Kurt Hendricks (Michael Nyqvist), a man who wants to start a nuclear war. America and Russia are on the brink of war and when the director the IMF (Tom Wilkinson) is killed, Ethan and his team, Julie (Paula Patton), Benji (Simon Pegg) and Brandt (Jeremy Renner) have to go rouge to stop Hendricks.
Ghost Protocol is certainly a fun, action film with great car chases (the BMW i8 was absolutely glorious), fight scenes and stunts like the climbing of Burj Khalifa, where you really got to feel the height and the wind (which is scary to because I have a fear of heights). This is a film that uses it international setting even, using related music, for whether it was in Russia, the Middle East and India. The locations made scene to the context of the film, countries that are important or emerging on the national scene. Brad Bird made the leap from animation with good moment of success, delivering a fast paced film with a lot of humour and great action. The only real problem was the CGI was actually pretty poor and looked cheap: even more surprising because of his great work at Pixar. Lets hope Bird's next film is his long awaited film about the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake.
Whilst Cruise leads this film, a strength of Ghost Protocol is that the rest of the team play more of a role and this film is not the Tom Cruise show. This will help the series distinguish itself from Bond and Bourne. They are all got there own skills and show themselves to be more capable as fighters and agents. They are smart and resource and Bird does get a very interesting cast. Cruise who is a competent action star, showing he can fight, do stunts and is willing to get hurt, which makes Ethan more fallible and you could actually route for him more. You felt the pain. Renner is an emerging actor, getting the big roles he should have gotten 10 years ago. He is more convincing when he is able to be a hard action man then the seemingly weak, nervous character thrown in over his head. Simon Pegg is given a bigger role and his character was the comic relief with good jokes and interaction but he is not a fool, he is competent and can at least handle himself, even if he is the weakest fighter. But the rest of the cast is made up from more independent film stars, Paula Patton (Precious), Michael Nyqvist (the Millennium Trilogy), Lea Seydoux (Inglorious Basterds), Anil Kapoor (Slumdog Millionaire) and they were all very strong. Patton was great as the female member of the team, hard, resourceful but also has some demons and it was great fist fight she has with Seydoux (who has a small but fun part). Nyqvist is as a good a villain Phillip Seymour Hoffman but that is because is such a great actor and Nyqvist was made out to be a mad man with a crack pot idea. But he is physically tougher and could actually handle himself in a fight. But he is not as menacing or had great moments like Hoffman had.
Whilst Pegg did provide good comedy I think Ghost Protocol did over use it. I hope that the fifth film can takes a darker turns and be more serious, showing innocent people getting hurt or agents that we know getting killed. Also the plot itself possibly would have fitted more if it was set during the Cold War or was able China and America heading towards war (but it would have also been more like Tomorrow Never Dies and X-Men: First Class). Plus the team do over use advance technology throughout the mission, particularly because the team was meant to have no support from outside. It would have shown the stakes were even higher if they did not have the resources they normally have. And the product placement did go a little overboard, particularly the use of Apple products.
Overall I think M:I III is a better film overall, Ghost Protocol is a enjoyable film, filled with entertaining set pieces and at least shows some consistence for the series, acknowledging events from the previous film and kept a similar tone, world and feel. It also shows that IMF stays on as a similar intelligence body.