Action-Filled Spawn Of 1960's TV Brings In New Convert To Its Fold, Me!

Rating: 8/10 (29 December 2011)

WE ADMIT THAT we are not as young as we once were. Who is? Time waits for no man and twice on Suundays! No matter who we are, how important or how rich, we all find ourselves as the victims of a great conspiracy; one that is perpetrated by our own parents. Their names just happen to be Mother Nature and Father Time!
SO PLEASE BEAR with us while we go through some of the obligatory maneuvers that we have come to use when we write certain of these reviews. For, you see Schuiltz, that having been born in the period of time directly following World War II, we have been branded as "Boomers" (For 'Post War Baby Boom.')and have been around to witness quite a bit of History being made by now.
WHEN YOU ADD to this, the possession of a quite proficient memory that seems to retain traces of encounters with the most trivial of events, facts and pop culture; you have some combination of faculties that can oft be described as a pain in the posterior.
WELL ANYWAY,HERE goes nothing!
IN MAKING THIS inevitable comparison to the original TV Series, MISSION:IMPOSSIBLE (Desilu/CBS TV, 1966-73), we must come to the conclusion fairly, squarely, honestly, earnestly and sincerely. Following all of these virtues faithfully can lead us to only one conclusion. And that is, there is not ,uch resemblance to the old series.
OH SURE, THE basic premise is there. The story revolves around a super secret group of covert operatives who work for some yet to be determined Department of the Federal Government. The recorded instructions always finish up with something like, "......as usual, should you decide to accept this assignment and you or any of your operatives are discovered, "the Secretary" will disavow any knowledge of your activities. Good Luck, Chester!" (or what ever other appropriate given name applicable.)
WELL, WE'VE GIVEN you the downside of this review, so it's only proper to be "fair and balanced", as th folks over at FOX NEWS say, and tell the other side. That is if there is another side to tell you, we certainly will.
SO, IT'S GOOD NEWS, folks for even though we have lamented nostalgically about "the Good Olde Days" and sobbed a little about the passing of time and the old TV Series, we actually did like and enjoyed this movie. Once we have divorced all of the old feelings, we can measure this, or any other film, on its own merit.
AS FOR ITS star and executive producer, Mr. Tom Cruise, we find his performance amidst all of this outrageous action, exploding vehicles, devious plot twists and super-energized stunts to be most competent, appropriate to this genre and even believable. (We recall that this is the same guy who worked so well dramatically with Dustin Hoffman in RAINMAN.
UNFORTUNATELY, WE HADN'T seen the previous MISSION:IMPOSSIBLE outing at the time of this writing. Stubbornly, we refused to believe that there was anything of interest for us (ME!) in it.
OBVIOUSLY ""WE" WERE wrong! We apologize, Mr. Cruise and I'm sorry!