MISSION IMPOSSIBLE : GHOST PROTOCOL - archive from 21st December 2011.

Saw 'MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: GHOST PROTOCOL' last night. The Tom Cruise actioner now in it's forth instalment is Directed by Brad Bird in his first live action feature film and does a solid job bringing the 'anything goes' premise of animation to live action and pulling it off well. 'No Plan, No Back Up, No Choice' is what the tag line tells us and it seems that our crack team of impossible mission colleagues are up the proverbial creek this time without a paddle . . . or are they? Knowing they have been in a tight squeeze before, and up against it, what does this latest outing offer us the viewer?

With Ethan Hunt (Cruise, as if you didn't know) and his crack team of IMF operatives implicated in the bombing of the Kremlin and now being touted as international terrorists, they have been disavowed by the US Government and the President has initiated the 'Ghost Protocol'. Their only choice is to go underground, to disappear off the radar, and seek out all means in which to clear their names and the organisation for whom they work. No longer do they have the resources usually at their disposal or the backup to safeguard their wellbeing, and Hunt and his small team is forced to join up with other IMF agents whose motivation might not be quite the same as their own. Who can he trust?

Needless to say this will be no easy task as the action takes us from Moscow to Dubai to Mumbai with cohorts Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg), William Brandt (Jeremy Renner) and Jane Carter (Paula Patton) in tow - with Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames in a cameo) appearing at the end.

Uncovering plans to kick start a nuclear war, the IMF boys need to thwart this plan, the villains perpetrating it and led by Kurt Hendricks (Michael Nyqvist) a Russian nuclear strategist and prove their innocence in a high stakes game of high-tech gadgetry, daring-do, stunt high-jinks at the top of the worlds tallest building (the Burj Khalifa tower in Dubai) amongst other things and a cat & mouse chase to far flung places of interest, all the while engaged in a race against the clock.

Worth the price of a ticket to see how well Cruise has now settled into the role, and how well Brad Bird delivers on the several action set pieces that have become the trademark of this franchise, and another long standing English spy series of a similar ilk by comparison. Made for US$145M this instalment brought in US$695M in its Box Office and after sales haul and made it the most successful film so far in the M:I series, and Tom Cruise's biggest commercial success up to this point. It garnered four Award wins and a further 26 nominations in the final analysis, and therefore collectively cemented 'M:I 5' - due for release in December 2015. Available now on BluRay and DVD.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-