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Title: Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol
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| CONSUMER ADVICE |
Parents, this movie has no sex or language, and the violence is mild. Recommended for ages 10 and up. |
In several interviews I've observed about director Brad Bird he gets very frustrated when someone calls animation a genre. He says it's a style, and NOT a genre! I get the sense that he feels his achievements are downsized a bit when he's been making a variety of different kinds of movies and then seeing them all lumped into one category as if he were a one trick pony. He claims he's not an animation director, just a movie director. Well, he may be a movie director, but if “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol” proves anything it's that he really isn't an animation director. No, I would call him a straight up visual director, one who also happens to have an eye for a well-paced story.
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Most movies would be lucky to have one great action sequence, but “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol” has at least three. Maybe five (I'm still trying to figure out how that climax so skillfully cut between two major sequences without becoming confusing). My favorite one involves Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) having to climb a 105 story building, all while a dust storm lingers in the background. The scene builds tension so slowly I started to get dizzy, but I was so caught up in the sequence I dared not look away for even a moment. What Ethan is doing on that building is setting a trap to catch a terrorist who has nuclear codes in action.
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As always the mission is highly improbable, but hopefully possible. Like the previous films he has a crew to work with, including computer hacker Benji (Simon Pegg), Jane (Paula Patton), and a chief analyst named William (Jeremy Renner) who has skills that a typical analyst shouldn't have. Who are the bad guys in this one? Well, sadly, they're a bunch of crazy nuclear extremists that think the world will be better if it was blown up. That's a far cry from the previous film, where Philip Seymore Hoffman went one-on-one with Cruise in a battle of wits that proved to be exciting and intelligent. But I digress; one a dimensional villain is fun sometimes.
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Watching “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol” I got the feeling that Brad Bird was a big kid who got a bunch of really cool toys and couldn't resist taking them out and playing with them. Among them were IMAX cameras, which give many of the sequences such a heightened and more intense scope that I feel sorry for those people who choose to see this on anything but the largest screen they can find. He has his characters crash a bunch of really cool cars and then has them destroy the block while they're at it. While he's at it, his irreverent sense of humor that helped him so much at Pixar helps turn up the fun in this movie so much that I could just relax and go with the flow.
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Hollywood spends millions of dollars each week trying to convince us to see the latest “it” movie, but “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol” actually feels like one. By opening it up exclusively to IMAX and large format screens before the general release, they all but proved their point that this is a big film that can't be appreciated on a small screen or at home. Thankfully the movie has the goods to justify this release pattern and already you can see people responding to this. Most people even seem ready to finally forgive Tom Cruise for that whole jumping on Oprah's couch thing. ‘Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol” is exhilarating and fun. See it on the biggest screen you can possibly find.
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