Pretty standard fare for quite a successful franchise

Rating: 7/10 (2 October 2012)

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning
IMF's top agent, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is sprung from a Russian jail and intercepts with an operation to take the launch codes to a nuclear device from a group of terrorists, during which an IMF agent is killed. Then, after a terrorist atrocity in Moscow, he learns the American government is going to deny all knowledge of his team's existence. Still, with high stakes and personal vengeance to take care of, him and his team mount their own mission to track down terrorist leader Kurt Hendricks (Michael Nvqvist) before he obtains the launch codes and initiates a catastrophe.
In spite of not being a massive fan of the series, the fourth Mission: Impossible film is the only one so far I haven't seen at the cinema, where it's true spectacle for the type of film it is can be fully appreciated. Yes, something did feel lost from it watching it on DVD, even on a flat screen TV with surround sound, something you could only really get in an auditorium with a big bucket of pop corn in your hand.
This time round, directing duties fall on the shoulders of Brad Bird, who before was behind only a list of kids films, including Disney favourites The Incredibles and Ratatouille, as well as the 1999 Warner Brothers effort The Iron Giant, not to mention one or two episodes of The Simpsons. In what appears to be his first adult themed effort, he rarely lets up on the spectacle (to wit, Cruise scaling the tallest building in the world in Dubai with a pair of magnetic gloves that flash blue when okay and red when you're fu*ked) while spinning a story that feels a bit over complicated, failing to get from point a to point b like you should in these films.
Still, it's no less the sum of it's parts than the last three films, with a lively supporting cast including Jeremy Renner and Brit actors Simon Pegg and Tom Wilkinson, a mix of old time and up coming that shows a long running franchise could still have some life in it. ***