Looking, not feeling in a film where spectacle takes priority over all else

Rating: Null/10 (1 April 2012)

There is quite a lot of punctuation in the title of this film and as one would expect there is a lot of action in the actual film itself. The plot here sees the entire IMF disavowed, leaving Ethan Hunt and his team to try and prevent a nuclear war with just the four of them (and loads of clever gadgets). It is an effort that takes them across the globe and puts them in constant danger.
It has been over 15 years since the first Mission: Impossible film was made and it seems that the path the series is taking is set. For all its faults I enjoyed the original film because I thought De Palma's direction was excellent in regards several of the set-pieces, creating tension and a sense of actual danger. Jump forward in time to this film though and what we get is something that seems much more focused on the visual rather than the feel – perhaps due to the direction of Bird, someone who knows a thing or two about how things look. So, just like the first film, we get lots of set-pieces across the 2 hour plus running time and indeed many of them are cleverly put together and have a real look of the spectacular about them. Climbing the tower in Dubai is the most obvious, but a fight in an automated multi-storey car park is just as good. Visually it mostly looks great and this is why you will often find people telling you to go and see this on as big a screen as possible – because the images are by far the best thing about the film, so why not make them bigger (and therefore better)? The only caveat to this praise is that for some reason the back projection of images is awful throughout. There are some large sequences where the cast are on green-screen and all of them are badly done; no idea why, but they stand out all the more when in a film where the images and effects are generally good.
To a point this works; to a point. A film constructed on such images certainly makes it very easy to market in a trailer which samples these many images, but when it comes to the two-hour film more is needed and unfortunately it isn't there. My girlfriend commented at the end that M:I-GP was basically lots of separate action setups but with nothing at all in between, and she is right because that is how the film works. There are some attempts at character-development or intrigue but mainly the whole film exists because of the collection of set-pieces that are evenly spread across it. In between there isn't anything worth noting, the plot is standard stuff, the comedy doesn't really fit particularly well and there is nothing but the feeling of time being filled. This time in between needed to be used to engage the viewer and make us care and because it isn't, the visual set-pieces remain just that – visual. I never felt the team were in danger, never felt there was a risk to what they were doing or that I should care beyond being impressed by the scale of the images in front of me.
The cast are basically just points on the screen to be the focal point within bigger things to look at – there isn't really a "performance" here to talk about. Cruise works hard but I am biased because I always find him cheesy and obvious – his final scene with his team is by far the best/worst example of this but throughout he is unable to convince for me (but I know others love him, so each to their own). Renner is capable of much more than this and, although he is a nice addition, he doesn't get much to do. Pegg is quite amusing but needed a bit stronger material to be better. Patton looks awesome – this is her task and it is a task she performs admirably. Various goons come and go without much to tell them apart – again they are furniture, not actors. Brad Bird's direction is strong in the action sequences and he is part of the film being as successfully visually as it is, however he cannot find much below this level and even when the words on the page are saying there should be more, it still doesn't come off.
Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol is not an awful film, indeed it is a fun film to watch on a Saturday night because there is a lot going on but yet very little attention or thinking is required. It is about the spectacle though – nothing else, sadly not even the "action" because only once or twice did I find it exciting, mostly I just found it visually impressive. I watched this film – I didn't feel it. It is a big budget franchise so it will make money and they will make more of it and of course I will return for my fix of "spectacle", but I do hope the next film puts some content in there and can produce the feeling of tension and danger, not just the look of it.