A pretty poor effort

Rating: 4/10 (17 December 2011)

How on earth did this get 8.1 on IMDb? I have no idea. Admittedly I haven't paid much attention to the series since the first one, so I assume they've dropped the serious side and tried to go action-comedy, ala The Evil Dead series.
So where does it go wrong? Firstly, the mix of comedy and seriousness is like oil and water. A film like True Lies did it well. Even though the stakes were high, the underlying comedy was well played. In Mission:Impossible 4, there's a weird mix of slapsticky humour, and serious action film violence. It doesn't work very well. Think Mission Impossible 1 crossed with Shaun of the Dead. To be fair, there's a few funny moments, but they're few and far between.
The plot is awful. I have no idea why some random guy decided to start World War 3. There's some weak justification given, but it doesn't make sense. Apparently the bad guy is insane, and that's reason enough. I mean, hey! Why waste time actually telling a coherent story? The dialogue is okay, but the pacing and scenes are shambolic. There's no tension (as befitting the brink of World War 3) in the film.
The action is okay. There's some explosions, the tallest building in the world and so on, but it's all pretty rushed and weak. Due to the fact that the writer decided not to have a decent storyline, everything the team does seems poorly planned and haphazard. There are no twists in the story, and no suspense. Because the audience is never really sure what the stakes are, it makes for a dull film. The characters are worthless, and there's no audience connection to them.
Cruise is in pretty uncharismatic mode; Pegg is miscast (well, no, Pegg is a great comedy actor, but more correctly the role is miscast); Renner is dawdling in the corner; the other cast members are mostly just going through their paces. The bad guy is okay, but he's largely just an after-thought.
I knew that the film would suck; I was just surprised at how much it sucks. The writer was very lazy on this one. The direction is competent without being great.
4 out of 10. I wouldn't even bother til the DVD is off new release and in the weekly aisle at the video store.