Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol | Little White Lies

Mis­sion: Impos­si­ble – Ghost Protocol

26 Dec 2011 / Released: 26 Dec 2011

Words by Matt Bochenski

Directed by Brad Bird

Starring Jeremy Renner, Simon Pegg, and Tom Cruise

Person in black outfit, looking serious while walking past server racks in a data centre.
Person in black outfit, looking serious while walking past server racks in a data centre.
4

Anticipation.

Cruise is awesome. Mission: Impossible is awesome.

3

Enjoyment.

Occasionally semi-awesome, but not nearly awesome enough.

2

In Retrospect.

Sub-awesome.

Twen­ty min­utes of Dubai-based block­buster gold aside, Ghost Pro­to­col is kind of flat, inert and not all that exciting.

Fin­ger­tips strain­ing 2,000-feet above the desert, Tom Cruise’s ver­ti­go-induc­ing climb up the Burj Khal­i­fa in Dubai is as good a reminder as any of the raw pow­er of cin­e­ma to thrill. This, in every respect, is the high point of a block­buster strug­gling with its identity.

Who is Ethan Hunt? Ghost Pro­to­col would have you believe he’s Amer­i­can cinema’s answer to James Bond – not just a secret agent, but a cel­lu­loid icon who can float from film to film with lit­tle in the way of con­ti­nu­ity. And so, after six years, Hunt is back with a fresh batch of ten­u­ous team­mates, orbit­ing his cen­tral star with scarce­ly a char­ac­ter arc between them.

After a rogue Russ­ian nuclear sci­en­tist frames the IMF (the Impos­si­ble Mis­sion Force; not the bankers) for a ter­ror­ist attack on the Krem­lin – part of a plot to kick-start Armaged­don – the US gov­ern­ment is forced to ini­ti­ate its ghost pro­to­col’, offi­cial­ly dis­avow­ing Hunt’s team, leav­ing them (as the film’s tagline has it) with no plan, no back­up, no choice’.

Only, as it turns out, they have a bunch of plans (which all require expla­na­tions that grind the film to a halt), appar­ent­ly lim­it­less access to hi-tech gad­gets (some whizzy; oth­ers ridicu­lous), enough cash to pay for posh hotel rooms, cool sun­glass­es and fan­cy cars, and the explic­it choice of back­ing out if they wish. So…

The prob­lem with Ghost Pro­to­col, then, is one of detail. It’s a curi­ous­ly old-fash­ioned film – not in the sense that it harks back to the glo­ry days of the 60s spy thriller, but in its for­mu­la­ic struc­ture, its bom­bast, its more-is-more naivety. Nig­gles accu­mu­late from the start (the bizarre cred­it sequence that gives away key plot points; Michael Giacchino’s suf­fo­cat­ing inter­pre­ta­tion of Lalo Schifrin’s score), and the film only gets more ill-dis­ci­plined as it continues.

But there’s a deep­er prob­lem, too – one of psy­chol­o­gy. Because Ethan Hunt isn’t James Bond. He doesn’t exist in the cul­tur­al ether, so when he spends six years away from the screen we lose our con­nec­tion with him, a con­nec­tion that direc­tor Brad Bird does lit­tle to re-estab­lish, save for a dire coda that nods in the most sen­ti­men­tal way towards the events of the pre­vi­ous film.

Hav­ing made his name on ani­mat­ed fea­tures The Iron Giant and The Incred­i­bles, Bird makes an uneven tran­si­tion to real-life. There are too many awk­ward close-ups and clum­sy zooms, but he brings a wel­come clar­i­ty to the film’s action sequences. These are ambi­tious, if hit-and-miss, with impres­sive stunt work off­set by sur­pris­ing­ly ropey CGI. Only in scal­ing the world’s tallest build­ing does Bird real­ly cut loose – send­ing his cam­era soar­ing, swoop­ing and div­ing around Cruise.

For his part, The Mis­sile earns his pay­day, putting his 50-year-old frame through all sorts of pun­ish­ment in the name of a good time. But, 20 min­utes of Dubai-based block­buster gold aside, Ghost Pro­to­col isn’t that good a time. It’s kind of flat, inert – occa­sion­al­ly spec­tac­u­lar but not all that exciting.

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