ViewGuide

Created Dec 21, 2011 10:59PM PST • Edited Feb 18, 2023 11:30AM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Good 3.0

   Your mission, should you choose to accept it: Pay $15 for an IMAX sequel that spurns the music and conventions that defined Mission Impossible in the first place and that fails to induce vertigo, IMAX or no. Doesn’t seem a worthwhile value in these recessionary times.

   MI – GP is a good movie, worth seeing on a big screen even, just not worth the 50% IMAX premium. It compares unfavorably to the Sherlock Holmes sequel that opened the same day and even more unfavorably to last year’s Salt, a similar super-spy movie originally written for Tom Cruise. Salt proved that Angelina Jolie is a more interesting star than Cruise and that ultra-action requires a degree of physical creativity that is harder to pull off than just having a guy hang by one hand from the side of a super-tall building.

   This fourth MI could have been so much more if it had fully embraced its heritage, or had a better Dr. Evil, or even if it had Katie Holmes cameo at the end instead of Michelle Monaghan. Mission: Impossible? Apparently so.

4. Acting

   Good 3.0

   Tom Cruise doesn’t embarrass himself. It’s even kind of nice to meet him on the big screen again. Plus he still looks great, buff as ever. However his charisma is merely adequate for the job. The movie seems at least as big as he does, which didn’t happen back in his salad days.

   Paula Patton and Simon Pegg are the movie’s two most welcome presences, she smart and sexy, he funny and surprising. We knew about him. She’s a nice find.

   Jeremy Renner and Michael Nyqvist are less successful, Renner a touch too grim, Nyqvist insufficiently evil. Renner’s going to have to up the charisma quotient if he takes over the franchise as rumored. Nyqvist’s Dr. Evil simply doesn’t instill dread, a fundamental problem in an action movie.

   Amongst the cameo players:

   • Anil Kapoor delights as a Mumbai billionaire with expensive tastes. And his hair is perfect, to quote Warren Zevon.
   • Léa Seydoux fails her femme fatale mission.
   • Josh Holloway cuts an arresting figure as an IMF agent. The guy should make the jump from the small screen to the big.

5. Male Stars Very Good 3.5

   Cruise

6. Female Stars Good 3.0

   Paula Patton

7. Female Costars OK 2.5

8. Male Costars Good 3.0

   Simon Pegg – Great. Jeremy Renner – Very Good. Michael Nyqvist – OK. Josh Holloway – Good.

10. Film

    Good 3.0

    Brad Bird’s famous inventiveness and whimsy lighten the proceedings, yet don’t carry the day. Why didn’t he and his writers play out MI’s trademark elements? The masks, the inventive cons and Lalo Schifrin’s essential music are more winked at than utilized. Pity.

11. Direction Very Good 3.5

    Brad Bird’s The Incredibles was unfailingly inspired. Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol isn’t, notwithstanding the pie-eyed praise most professional critics are heaping on Bird’s film.

12. Play OK 2.5

13. Music OK 2.5

14. Visuals Great 4.0

    The Kremlin bombing is the most impressive visual, way exceeding the signature spider-man scene outside the world’s tallest building in Dubai. The takedown of the Kremlin is a serious wow however!

    Speaking of signature scenes: The original MI gave us Tom Cruise hanging by a thread, a visual burned into the zeitgeist. Anything similarly long lived in MI – GP? Nope.

15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 1.7

17. Sex Titillating 1.6

18. Violence Fierce 1.8

19. Rudeness Salty 1.8

21. Reality

    Surreal 3.0

22. Circumstantial Surreal 2.6

23. Biological Supernatural 3.4

24. Physical Surreal 3.0