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"Mission Impossible 4" most powerful yet
By David Germain |
January 6, 2012, Friday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
LUCKILY for Tom Cruise, "Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol" is one of his finest action flicks, just what's needed to potentially restore some of this fallen star's box-office bankability.
For director Brad Bird, though, the fourth "Mission," rock solid as it is, ranks only as his second-best action movie, after the animated smash "The Incredibles."
Cruise may be the star here, but Bird's the story, a director who's only making his fourth movie and, remarkably, just his first live-action feature. This is the best of the "M:I" movies, far better than Brian De Palma's original, No.2 by John Woo and even the franchise's previous high with No.3 by J.J. Abrams, who produced this one.
Those three filmmakers had years and years of action stuff behind them with real, live actors. Yet along comes Bird to show that the enormous talent behind his Academy Award winners "The Incredibles" and "Ratatouille" and his acclaimed cartoon adventure "The Iron Giant" transfers mighty nicely from animation to the real world.
Granted, this is the real world, "M:I"-style, where Cruise's missions and stunts truly are impossible by the laws of physics and normal, plausible storytelling constraints. But Bird applies the limitlessness of cartoons and just goes for it, creating some thrilling, dizzying, amazing action sequences.
If you have the slightest fear of heights, grip the arm rests and press both feet flatly to the floor during Cruise's attempt to scale the world's tallest building; even safe in your seat, an unnerving feeling of vertigo is bound to result as you stare down from the 130th floor.
For the climb up Dubai's 823-meter Burj Khalifa skyscraper, the filmmakers claim they had planned to re-create part of the building's exterior and have Cruise scale it on a safe soundstage. But Cruise wanted to climb the real thing, so much of the sequence was filmed with him harnessed to the building more than 300 meters up.
For all the complexity of action and gimmicks, Bird and his screenwriters wisely tell a simple, good-guys-against-bad-guys story. They keep Cruise surrounded by a tight, capable supporting cast in Jeremy Renner, Paula Patton and Simon Pegg.
The movie starts with a clever jailbreak by Cruise's Ethan Hunt, stuck in a Moscow prison for reasons unexplained until late in the story, then serves up an opening-credit montage fondly reminiscent of the old "Mission: Impossible" TV show.
Once free, Ethan is dispatched to infiltrate the Kremlin along with Impossible Missions Force agents Jane Carter (Patton) and Benji Dunn (Pegg). But it's all a setup by madman Kurt Hendricks (Michael Nyqvist), who sets off a devastating explosion at the Kremlin to cover his theft of a Russian nuclear launch device and manages to finger Ethan's team for the blast.
With US-Russian tension at its worst since the Cuban missile crisis, the threat that's always hung over the IMF team comes to pass: the secretary (Tom Wilkinson) disavows knowledge of their actions, leaving Hunt and his comrades on their own as they try to clear their names and stop Hendricks from instigating nuclear war.
Joining them is Wilkinson's aide, William Brandt (Renner), a guy who takes to field work a little too easily to be the desk-jockey analyst he claims he is.
Cruise looks shaggy, and sure, we could blame his bad haircut on the fact that Ethan's just out of prison. But it doesn't help an aging screen idol to look so unkempt; the "Mission: Impossible" world routinely defies reality, so would it have been so far-fetched for Ethan to stop by a salon before heading back into action?
What Cruise does on screen is pretty much the same-old. Ethan runs, Ethan leaps, Ethan bashes faces, Ethan violates traffic laws, Ethan runs some more. Cruise has two main modes in his acting repertoire: flash that thousand-watt smile or play the stone-face, and he mostly does the latter here, so honestly, Ethan's not all that interesting when he's standing still and talking.
That work ethic of Cruise, though, shows in every one of the spectacular action moments. Maybe it's time people think about giving him a break.
For director Brad Bird, though, the fourth "Mission," rock solid as it is, ranks only as his second-best action movie, after the animated smash "The Incredibles."
Cruise may be the star here, but Bird's the story, a director who's only making his fourth movie and, remarkably, just his first live-action feature. This is the best of the "M:I" movies, far better than Brian De Palma's original, No.2 by John Woo and even the franchise's previous high with No.3 by J.J. Abrams, who produced this one.
Those three filmmakers had years and years of action stuff behind them with real, live actors. Yet along comes Bird to show that the enormous talent behind his Academy Award winners "The Incredibles" and "Ratatouille" and his acclaimed cartoon adventure "The Iron Giant" transfers mighty nicely from animation to the real world.
Granted, this is the real world, "M:I"-style, where Cruise's missions and stunts truly are impossible by the laws of physics and normal, plausible storytelling constraints. But Bird applies the limitlessness of cartoons and just goes for it, creating some thrilling, dizzying, amazing action sequences.
If you have the slightest fear of heights, grip the arm rests and press both feet flatly to the floor during Cruise's attempt to scale the world's tallest building; even safe in your seat, an unnerving feeling of vertigo is bound to result as you stare down from the 130th floor.
For the climb up Dubai's 823-meter Burj Khalifa skyscraper, the filmmakers claim they had planned to re-create part of the building's exterior and have Cruise scale it on a safe soundstage. But Cruise wanted to climb the real thing, so much of the sequence was filmed with him harnessed to the building more than 300 meters up.
For all the complexity of action and gimmicks, Bird and his screenwriters wisely tell a simple, good-guys-against-bad-guys story. They keep Cruise surrounded by a tight, capable supporting cast in Jeremy Renner, Paula Patton and Simon Pegg.
The movie starts with a clever jailbreak by Cruise's Ethan Hunt, stuck in a Moscow prison for reasons unexplained until late in the story, then serves up an opening-credit montage fondly reminiscent of the old "Mission: Impossible" TV show.
Once free, Ethan is dispatched to infiltrate the Kremlin along with Impossible Missions Force agents Jane Carter (Patton) and Benji Dunn (Pegg). But it's all a setup by madman Kurt Hendricks (Michael Nyqvist), who sets off a devastating explosion at the Kremlin to cover his theft of a Russian nuclear launch device and manages to finger Ethan's team for the blast.
With US-Russian tension at its worst since the Cuban missile crisis, the threat that's always hung over the IMF team comes to pass: the secretary (Tom Wilkinson) disavows knowledge of their actions, leaving Hunt and his comrades on their own as they try to clear their names and stop Hendricks from instigating nuclear war.
Joining them is Wilkinson's aide, William Brandt (Renner), a guy who takes to field work a little too easily to be the desk-jockey analyst he claims he is.
Cruise looks shaggy, and sure, we could blame his bad haircut on the fact that Ethan's just out of prison. But it doesn't help an aging screen idol to look so unkempt; the "Mission: Impossible" world routinely defies reality, so would it have been so far-fetched for Ethan to stop by a salon before heading back into action?
What Cruise does on screen is pretty much the same-old. Ethan runs, Ethan leaps, Ethan bashes faces, Ethan violates traffic laws, Ethan runs some more. Cruise has two main modes in his acting repertoire: flash that thousand-watt smile or play the stone-face, and he mostly does the latter here, so honestly, Ethan's not all that interesting when he's standing still and talking.
That work ethic of Cruise, though, shows in every one of the spectacular action moments. Maybe it's time people think about giving him a break.
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