Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011)

Brian De Palma’s Mission Impossible started a series that has not managed to live up to its basic identity of an intelligent espionage thriller. The series stumbled with John Woo’s stylized slowmo romanticism and continued to slide when JJ Abrams’ pushed it further into soppy revenge realm. With Brad Bird, a director known more for his animation work such as The Incredibles and Ratatouille, Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol sees a revival of sorts as it goes back to being an espionage thriller, but misses the intelligence of the first and gets stuck in the Russia bashing stereotype of the cold war.

The story revolves around a now single Ethan Hunt, who is out to save the world again. This time, a Kremlin bombing which took place at the same time as that of Hunt’s mission there, sees the IMF being disbanded because of Ghost Protocol, which the President has initiated. Hunt is told that the blame for the US-Russia standoff and the bombing is blamed on him and is offered a helping hand by the IMF secretary when he is handed a mission to stop the perpetrator of the Kremlin bombing, Cobalt from arming and deploying a Russian nuclear missile.

Hunt has the help of a new crew – a vengeful chick, an Englishman and a remorseful ex-agent and a basic set of supplies that he needs to use to chase Cobalt and prevent him from getting all that he needs – launch codes and a Russian satellite to relay the codes to a Russian nuclear capable submarine. How he goes about completing this ‘impossible’ mission is what we get to see.

First up, the thrill is back. The screenplay is racy, the action-inventive and pulsating. Then there are the Burj Khalifa stunts and car chases in a desert storm that are breathtaking. But the writers, Josh Applebaum and Andre Nemec have a serious problem with logic and imagination when it comes to the story as they rely on clichés such as rogue Russian satellites and chances of nuclear apocalypse. Bird’s direction misses drama in the subtext which involves Hunt’s team having an ex-agent who was careless enough to cause the death of his wife and the lady-agent becoming an avenging angel for her agent-boyfriend who is killed. Dramatic moments fall flat and the post-climactic mushiness is tremendously irritating.

The characters are bland – the English pencil pusher turned agent, the penitent ex-agent turned chief analyst and the avenging angel just don’t grow on the viewer. They don’t visibly progress much in the course of the story either, a key ingredient of good story telling. Neither does Cobalt, whose views seem to be loosely modeled on Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove. He is portrayed as just another trigger happy thug and that takes away the balance of the story.

Tom Cruise is back as the man of action, a departure from some of his dramatic efforts in recent years. He is as convincing as Hunt as he was in the first leg and does a very good job with a character that is thankfully more about the mission than about romancing a gal or protecting a wife. Jeremy Renner’s acting intensity is wasted as he sleep walks in analyst cum agent mode. Simon Pegg as the lovable pansy does not endear himself and neither do his Brit jokes.  Paula Patton has a perennial frown on her face which forms her standard response to anything that is thrown at her, including an incredibly wasted Anil Kapoor, as a billionaire playboy who also has access codes to a Russian satellite. Kapoor should have signed on a David Dhawan film and stayed in character than do this.

Watch MI4 for the thrills, but if you want the real deal, go back to the first one.