Entertaining if a tad too long spy action

Rating: 7/10 (22 February 2012)

If anything Mission:Impossible has been a fickle series of quality among its movies. Some people had give up the hope before M:I3 and were, like me, positively surprised when it turned out to be a good movie.
This time Brad Bird of Pixar fame was on the helm the movie and I do have to say, that the result is quite entertaining. The plot itself is pretty typical "stop the terrorist nuclear attack"-deal and the action scenes are as ludicrous you'd expect, but the style of the movie doesn't venture too far in the direction of M:I2, which is thought was idiotic beyond silly. Also the final act of the movie lost a quite lot of steam as it did felt like a try to make the movie a bit longer.
Tom Cruise is in a good shape and does his part as Ethan Hunt with such a vigor it's just enjoyable to watch. Personally I've never though him as a good "good guy" actor, his better roles have always been the bad guys, but this time he actually made me feel, that he is in fact a hero.
The rest of the cast does quite well with the material they are given. The bad guys are a bit bland and not that interesting, but overall the movie is entertaining for what it is.