Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol

Starring: Tom Cruise, Jeremy Renner, Simon Pegg, Paula Patton

Rated: PG-13

Mission-Impossible-Ghost-Protocol-Poster

When a bomb is detonated at the Kremlin IMF takes the blame and the agency is dissolved; only Ethan Hunt and his team can stop a potential nuclear war and clear the IMF.

When Tom Cruise did the couch jump, followed that up with the Matt Lower incident (Your Glib), the Brooke Shields incident and the famous squirt in the face with the fake microphone which resulted in the popular “you’re a jerk soundbite” all intermixed with pushing Scientology. I like much of America was turned off; it was as if this American Icon had been revealed to be a completely different person than we were led to believe. Cruise did his best to get back in everyone’s good graces but with an underperforming MI3 and the abomination that was Knight and Day it appeared that aside from his brilliant cameo in Tropic Thunder, America’s love affair with Cruise was over.

Here is the thing about Tom Cruise, The guy is a Pro. Things were not going as well as he would have liked, He stepped back changed tactics and went back to doing what he does best, The guy knows how to sell a movie, he is driven and has the balls to do things that most Actors would pass on, he is a risk taker and is relentless. The simple fact that the guy hung from the side of the Burj Khalifa building in Dubai wiped the slate clean for me. I can’t think of one other person who in a time with stunt doubles and CGI is such a professional that he would do this. Like I said Tom Cruise is a Pro

Tom Cruise Shoot Film at Burj Khalifa in Dubai

Ghost Protocol is easily the best in the MI franchise everything about it is big, yet not ridiculous, it’s grounded in reality just enough to keep everything moving forward at a breakneck pace, throw in enough character driven story to get you to the next action piece and you have a great film. The cast is stellar with Simon Pegg providing the comic relief and Jeremy Renner solidifying that he can not only do drama exceptionally well but just as easily deliver the action goods.

Cruise and company travel the globe from Russia to Dubai to Mumbai and back to the US with style and flair, each setting getting its own unique mission that would be the main action sequence in any other film all in the hopes of tacking down the mysterious Cobalt and stopping him from acquiring nuclear weapon launch codes.

You get everything you expect from an MI Film, Cool Gadgets, Secret Disguises, Awesome cars and most importantly team work, The team aspect after all is what sets it apart from being a Bond Clone.

Ultimately Ghost Protocol can only go as far as Cruise takes it, and the Cruise I grew up with is back. The Dubai scenes alone are worth getting off your ass and seeing this in the theater, if you can see it in IMAX even better. Its one thing for a crowd to clap after a movie it’s another for a crowd to clap after a scene.

I went into this not much of a Tom Cruise fan and honestly not much of a Mission Impossible fan (John Woo’s MI2 soured me on the franchise), However I walked away not only changing my view on the franchise but changing my view on Cruise and only a good movie can do that. Tom Cruise is just like his character Ethan Hunt don’t bet against him when he decides to go Rogue.

Grade-94