MI-4: Toilet Protocol (w/ spoilers)

Rating: 6/10 (2 January 2012)

Easily the worst in the MI franchise. It's movies like this that make me wonder how movies ever get made. The story is a badly regurgitated Cold War plot that requires the ghosted IMF team to stop a Russian physicist trained in special forces martial arts from acquiring nuke launch codes and starting Armageddon.
Apparently, since the global economic downturn, a spy organization as sophisticated as IMF doesn't have the budget for foolproof self-destruct phones anymore. The newly assembled ghost IMF team is comprised of incompetent misfits;
Ethan Hunt - As every super hero since Superman and Batman can tell you, personal relationships can be difficult, particularly if you choose a "civilian" (non-super hero) to be your spouse resulting in every demented supper villain coming after them as a means of striking at the Achilles' Heal of the super hero - Duh. Ethan was well aware of this danger since MI-1 when Kittridge used coded news footage of his aunt/uncle being arrested to uncover his location. Everything that Ethan hunt did was pointless; he saved a fellow Russian prisoner as future collateral for contacting a Russian connected with black market weapons - unnecessary and he probably could have gotten the same information from a Google search. He infiltrated the Kremlin as an aged but youthfully well built Russian general and failed to prevent a national disaster, resulting in an annoyingly re-occurring cat-and-mouse chase with Russian intelligence. Lastly, he has a wife that he can never talk to - huh?
Benji (the tech guy) - is plagued by delusions of grandeur and suffers from AADD. Even when presented with the opportunity to go undercover in Russia, Benji just can't manage to shut up, even though his "English" mutterings might just give away the fact that he is not a Russian officer. Every gadget this guy touches malfunctions. Apparently, the American version of James Bond's "Q" leaves much to be desired.
Agent Carter - after leading a failed op that resulted in the death of not only her key agent, but apparently a secret love interest, she battles with a schizophrenic bout of manic depression. When ordered not to kill potentially important sources of information what does she do - she kills the important source of information (instead of properly incapacitating them - what, no knock out serum?). During her one important mission to seduce an Indian mogul, she displays a neurosis that oddly proves sadistically seductive. The goal is to procure his coded access to his satellite in order to prevent the Russian physicist from transmitting his launch codes. Which they ultimately fail to do. But thankfully there is always a backup shutdown switch in a briefcase!
Agent Bradt - another failed agent whose covert mission to protect Ethan and his wife while on vacation ended in a muddled cover-up operation to disguise Ethan's wife' witness protection plan as a faked death. Otherwise, he is utterly useless in preventing his boss from being killed or bad guys getting lose.
Bottom line, the story was underwhelming and lacked a clever/complex layered story, and was instead a sappy, corny, comedic parody of previous MI films. So, if you are expecting hi-octane drama, nail biting suspense, and memorable acting, skip MI-4 and see War Horse.