Impossible Missions of the Fourth Kind.

It’s been a while since we’ve seen Tom Cruise on the big screen. It was Valkyrie back in 2008 when I last saw him (I refuse to acknowledge Knight and Day) and he was actually pretty good in that, so I was fairly excited to see his latest action movie: Mission Impossible 4: Ghost Protocol.

Now, I have to admit, I’m not really big on the Mission Impossible movies. They’re kind of the third place action movies behind the Bond and Bourne flicks. And let’s face it there aren’t a whole lot of movie franchises that have produced a fourth instalment that isn’t worse than watching paint dry on the inside of your eyelids. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull for example, that was fun.

You’d forgive me then for thinking Mission Impossible 4 would also be rubbish before I went in then, but in actual fact this wasn’t the case at all. Why? Because I knew Brad Bird was directing it. Yes, the same Brad Bird who directed Pixar’s The Incredibles and Ratatouille. Given his directing history you wouldn’t expect to find him directing the latest Tom Cruise action movie, and yet here he is doing Ghost Protocol. I have to admit I was intrigued as to what direction he’d take the franchise.

And whether it’s down to Bird’s direction or not, Mission Impossible 4 is actually a decent movie. It’s shot at a good pace, features a good blend of action and humour, and has the ridiculous plot you’ve come to expect from a movie called Mission Impossible.

My memory is slightly vague when it comes to the Mission Impossible franchise to be honest. At this point I’ve pretty much forgotten the whole storyline, so I can’t reliably comment on how it compares to the original trilogy, all I can do is look at it as a movie on its own, which I think the makers wanted anyway judging by the film having Ghost Protocol outweighing the Mission Impossible title on all the marketing bumf.

As far as action movies go, Ghost Protocol is a very decent one with an easy to follow plot and good hard-hitting action scenes. There are scenes in Dubai at the world’s tallest building: the Burj Khalifa where Cruise must scale the outside of the building and back in a set time (cue the music); there are chase scenes through sandstorms , fight scenes in elaborate car parks; it’s all very good stuff.

One thing about this movie that I can’t remember being true of the others is that it incorporates a lot more humour into it. This is done largely by Britain’s second biggest ginger export (after Rupert Grint of course) Simon Pegg.

Pegg isn’t exactly at his absolute best in this, but he does do a good job of being the comic relief character. He plays the computer genius, the bloke in all these kind of movies that stops lifts from working or turns off security cameras. These generic characters are usually attempted to be made out to be witty, and most of them fail. Ghost Protocol however, does not; Simon Pegg is definitely a good addition to the cast, contrary to my initial beliefs.

One thing I find quite amusing about Simon Pegg’s addition though is that the movie poster is going for the very same effect that Pegg and Frost mocked on the poster for Hot Fuzz. The whole ‘let’s all walk towards the camera wearing sunglasses’ effect. I found that pretty funny when I first saw the film’s poster.

As for the other members of the cast, we have inevitable eye candy in Paula Patton and Tom Cruise’s useful associate in Jeremy Renner. Both of them are fine enough, we get mere glimpses into their characters and so they don’t really end up leaving much of an impression on you.

Tom Cruise on the other hand, does a very good job. One thing I do know is that he did all his own stunts, which is pretty impressive in today’s world where every single actor cries off when asked to jump in a puddle.

Of course it’s cool these days to dislike Tom Cruise but I don’t really follow that line. He’s a good actor and I watch movies with him in it. That’s pretty much my relationship with the guy so I don’t really care what he gets up to in his private life, how many sofas he jumps up and down on or how paranoid he is about his height. He’s a good actor, he’s in many good movies, that’s all there is to it.

One downside to this movie however is the plot, it’s a little weak. Essentially a terrorist attempts to start a nuclear war between the Russians and the Americans by firing missiles around the globe like a deranged maniac. Obviously Ethan Hawke (that’s Cruise by the way) must stop them, only he must do it without the help of his government as the unit has been shut down: engage Ghost Protocol and all that jazz. Pretty standard stuff, but it didn’t ruin the movie by being so.

In fact I enjoyed it, I thought it was a very decent action movie with elements of comedy and no horrible tacked on love storylines. Brad Bird does a great job of directing and Cruise does a great job as the leading man.

Overall Mission Impossible 4 has managed to break the curse of the fourth instalment. It’s an action movie at its core and combines it with good scenarios and great locations that are shot brilliantly. It’s not Bond, or Bourne but it’s closer to them than I thought it would be.

Final Verdict: 3 Stars. The best movie starring Tom Cruise in 2011.