It seems as of late the entertainment world has fallen back in love with the spy genre. While it’s great to have such great films in the genre like Tinker Tailor Solider Spy, it’s also great to balance it out with some completely over the top save the world spy epic. Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol is the movie for that. With Tom Cruise back as Ethan Hunt with a new cast of a new team members Mission Impossible brings a nice piece of summer blockbuster in during the cold winter.
Ghost Protocol starts with Jane Carter (Paula Patton) and Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg) sent to a Russian Prison to retrieve Ethan Hunt. Once complete Hunt now reactivated has a mission to stop the mysterious Cobalt from gaining a Nuclear Launch Device from the Kremlin. The mission goes badly from interference from another team. The Kremlin is blown up and Ethan’s IMF team is blamed. Because of this The US government has to disavow the entire IMF and Ethan now has to use his team to stop Cobalt and save the world from Nuclear Disaster without any help and on the run.
Tom Cruise is being classic Tom Cruise here. This is familiar territory here. It’s good to see though, you won’t think about anything from his personal life here. You will fall back into the world of Mission Impossible. This is the same Ethan Hunt we have all been following for the last 15 years or so. Simon Pegg brought a great level of humor to the film. The timing of his comments and character’s still unease of being in the field brings great amount of levity to the situation even though it is world threatening plot of doom.
Paula Patton is also good in the film as a team leader who has lost her confidence a bit while also wanting revenge on person who killed a team member of hers. She handles action well and some of the better fight sequences in the whole movie. It’s pretty nice to see a female agent that doesn’t need to be saved by Ethan. Jeremy Renner does a decent job here too. One thing is his character isn’t super tough like a bunch of his characters of late. That’s not bad but it take a bit getting used to after seeing him be super bad ace the last couple of years.
Michael Nyqvist is the main villain Kurt Hendricks aka Cobalt. As far as villains go in Mission Impossible movies he’s about number 3 out of the four. He’s good acting wise but the character has the same plot as Ra’s Al Ghul in Batman stories. Vladimir Mashkov plays Anatoly Sidirov, a Russian agent trying to bring Ethan Hunt to justice for what he thinks is bombing the Kremlin. He’s not a bad guy just an adversary and a very good one. He has great presence and is very likable.
Brad Bird really did well in his first live action film. The stakes are high in the movie but it’s not to dark and still fun at the same time. It’s also very fun to watch a Mission Impossible movie where the tech fails them over and over. In the end if you want to have a complete fun theme park ride in the cinema check out Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol.
Final Grade B+