Fourth installment still holding up

Rating: Null/10 (23 December 2011)

This 4th installment has been well received, and for good reasons. It stays very firmly on course towards its mission: to entertain.
It's little odd to start at the middle but let me show how it makes sense. It's about an hour into the movie when the mission officially starts. It's also a situation that is unlike anything that we've seen before. The IMF (forget the messy debts problem in Europe) is effectively shut down and outlawed, reduced to only 4 people who happen to still have control of a disguised railway carriage that contains a reasonable supply of gadgets and arsenal, but a far cry from the immense backup they used to enjoy from the entire organization. What leads towards this point is important, although not entirely apparent initially.
It goes like this. IT wizard cum comical side kick Benji (Simon Pegg) and beautiful femme fatale Jane (Paula Patton) team up to rescue Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) from a Russian prison, the former he apparently knows quite well while the later he meets for the first time. Later, still in Russia, when his superior IMF Secretary (a brief, un-credited cameo by Tom Wilkinson) and an "analyst" assistant Brandt (Jeremy Renne) whom he has never met before are in the process of briefing him on the situation, an ambush kills the Secretary. That takes us to the point cited above, when the four team members who are thrown together, by fate to a degree, plan their mission.
The mission: to stop a mad Russian villain, who believes that destroying the entire human race once in a while is good, from starting a nuclear war. That's all you need to know, although there are of course intrigues, twists, human stories and the rest of them in a standard Hollywood super blockbuster thriller menu. What you are there to see is really the fantastic set pieces, and there are not a few. I'll skip the details. And if you still haven't heard about the scene at Dubai's Burj Hkalifa Tower, you probably don't live on this earth.
The cast is one to boast about. After "Hurt locker" everybody knows that Renner is one who can act. Pegg, who can be outrageously black-humour (think "Hot Fuzz"), is pure fun here. Visible minority beauty this time is Patton who, after launching herself in "Déjà Vu", is well positioned for stardom. Playing the villain is none other than Michael Nyqvist from the original "Girl with a dragon tattoo", making a convincing show of his dark side here. A delightful find is Lea Seydoux playing a deadly assassin. Those who have watched "Midnight in Paris" will remember her as lovely Gabrielle, Owen Wilson's character's new found love interest at the end of the movie. Finally, in addition to Wilkinson, there are two other uncredited cameos: Ving Rhames and Michelle Monaghan