Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol

cinema, Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011) film

What did I know about this film before I went in?

I tried to be aware of as few details as possible because I wanted to be surprised and impressed with what they came up with. Even so, I couldn't help reading or hearing the synopsis that the IMF was implicated in the bombing of the Kremlin and has to clear their name. I imagined this would have happened before the film started or maybe would launch the film, but it actually came a little way into the film.

I'd seen a clip of Ethan running down the side of a glass building, though I had only seen it imperfectly out of the corner of my eye, and I'd seen a few bits from the trailer which kept coming on TV - someone rolling away from either an exploding car or just falling to the ground in a cloud of dust (the sandstorm as it turned out). I'd seen and been mildly critical of Ethan in a tuxedo with the long hair from 'M:I2' which suited leather jackets and motorbikes, but not formal attire, but I had hopes that with the return of the long hair it would mean the film would, like 'M:I2,' be letting its hair down for a stylish thrill ride rather than a convoluted story. I knew Benji was to be in it, and from seeing the poster of the four of them I realised he was going to be one of the team. I was slightly worried that his character would be painfully irritating over the course of the film, but it wasn't so. Also in the poster the darker-skinned woman with shades on might, just might have been a return of Nyah from 'M:I2' although I didn't really believe that, it was just a far-fetched hope. I'd also seen a clip of Tom Wilkinson talking in the back of a car and imagined he'd be the current boss.

I'd found out rumours that Luther might have a very small role in the film, though he wouldn't be co-starring, and that Jeremy Renner, the up and coming action star, was set to take over the action scenes from Cruise. I heard that it was going to be a reboot and not have any connection with past adventures so there would be no mention of his wife, Julia. I'd also seen a picture of Hunt with goggles and gloves on, climbing a glass building with reflections either side of him, which looked fantastic.

With all these little hints and drips of information I was slightly excited about the film, and I never really get excited about new films any more. I was hoping, though not too hard, that it would be full of the hair-raising stunts, the brilliant twists and clever bluffs and double-bluffs that I love the film series for, I was especially on the lookout for how they were going to use the face masks in a new and innovative way and make the five year wait worthwhile.

What did I think of the film?

I don't think I'm ever going to love a new film again, and that knowledge is sad and frustrating. I wanted to love this film, I wanted it to be the film I could embrace and the film that didn't jiggle the camera around like JJ Abrams did in 'M:I3' and I wanted it to redeem the series after the third one fell a little more flat than I would have liked. But it didn't. The best I can say is that it made me appreciate 'M:I3' more and that's no compliment.

But first, how did it improve on the previous film?

The one major thing is that it's about something real, a physical, manifest threat, not a vague 'Rabbit's Foot' in a bottle. It is no less than the threat of nuclear destruction, and the plot of a madman to set the world afire. Another thing is that it doesn't deal with the mundane, everyday world that 'M:I3' dealt with. There are no parties of people just having fun (yes there's a party, but it's a full-on, lavish Indian party and there's a mission going on during it), there are no scenes of Ethan going to buy ice at the local convenience store, and no rubbishy disposable camera in which to get his mission briefing. The gadgets are generally first rate with some great ideas, my favourite being the screen projector that follows a target's eyes to fool them into thinking they're seeing the perspective of a corridor when actually Ethan and Benji are working away behind it. It has a few things I'd never seen before, such as the bullets speeding through the water after the car crash (which was the only time that made me jump, coming as it did after a long and boring conversation - whoops sorry, this is supposed to be the positive paragraph!), the climb up the massive glass tower (which at the time of viewing I didn't realise was the tallest building in the world), some good colour (mainly in the Dubai sequence), and crucially some links to continuity:

Luther Stickell does appear as he was rumoured to, albeit in a very brief scene reminiscent of the ending of the first film, and looking bizarrely younger than his last two appearances thanks to ditching the moustache! He was great, but he should have been in the film properly, but instead Simon Pegg's Benjamin Dunn took his role of back-up/computer expert/source of humour. Sad. Although I'd hoped Julia, Hunt's wife from the last film, would not be in this one because I didn't want it to become a spy soap, I also didn't want them to move on as if she never happened or it would completely undermine the third film since that all hinged on Hunt's love for his wife. Thankfully I was not disappointed and although I was sad that they had apparently fobbed her off with an offscreen death, at least she'd been mentioned. It became even better when it's revealed at the end that she did not in fact die (a key ingredient in the turmoil of Renner's character as he believed her death was due to his failure to protect her), but it was staged so she'd be safer, and she makes an appearance from a distance, though I was confused by it: did it mean that Hunt can never see or speak to his wife and that's why he looks slightly wistful at the end, or just at that moment he couldn't talk to her because of a mission? I also wasn't sure if it was indeed Michelle Monaghan back as Julia because I didn't see her name in the credits, but then I didn't see Ving Rhames' either so maybe the roles were too small to credit?

The other major link was the guy from the first film who Hunt meets up with to meet Max, the arms-dealer. As I saw this long-haired guy right after Hunt had lit another guy's cigarette, I thought how funny it was that he looked like the heavy from that film, and then he does look like him even more when Hunt goes up to him, then he pulls out a balaclava and I was excited! I thought they were going to bring in Vanessa Redgrave for a cameo, although that wouldn't have made sense because Hunt got her arrested so she'd hardly be friendly. So was it the same guy with the balaclava and the 'Max' arms dealer organisation was now run by the relation of Bogdan or was it supposed to just be an in-joke for the observant among us? Whatever the truth is, it was a summing up of the whole film for me: promising something, seeming to give it, then snatching it right back. That's how I felt.

I hate to say it, but I was almost never excited. Those that have claimed this is a thrill a minute, action scene after action scene showboat must be easily pleased. Or maybe I'm impossible to please (but this is 'Mission: Impossible' so it should seem more impossible). There was that moment with the balaclava, there was the car crash, and there was the building climb, but I wasn't thrilled, I wasn't worried about anybody's safety. Towards the end of the film the thought that they might kill off Hunt did cross my mind, just as it did in 'M:I3,' but if they hadn't earned the right to do it in that film, they certainly hadn't in this one so I was relieved that it didn't happen. Why was I on the verge of boredom for much of the first half? Have I seen everything that could ever impress me? Surely not, I can't believe this to be the case. So why wasn't I engaged and enthused? Partly I felt it was so underwhelming and partly it wasn't as clever as I was anticipating.

Like 'M:I3' before it I didn't care about the new characters of Agent Carter and Analyst Brandt. Benji was fine, but he wasn't the same character, out of necessity for the irritation factor, but there was no progression for him. He was a bonkers technician in '3' and now he's a fully paid up agent, speaks multiple languages, can handle a gun and wants to wear a mask. I didn't quite know how to react to him. I was glad he wasn't as annoying as I'd feared, yet I didn't warm to him. I was really hoping he wasn't going to be messing things up through the film, but one moment that was possibly the funniest for me was the brilliant mistake he makes with the aforementioned screen projector, getting his mug in frame so it fills the corridor and looking so surprised and horrified I couldn't help chuckling. Just thinking about it now makes me break out in a grin!

At least there weren't any of the team that I actively didn't like (whereas in '3' I didn't like the Irish guy), but neither did I warm to them at all. Carter was this impossibly cool agent that at least balanced the series out after all the useless female agents we've seen (I'm thinking primarily of the first film where two of them get killed so easily and another turns out to be evil), but we never got to know her properly and she seemed to have super-strength by all the ways she knocked around the big guys as she did. We're supposed to care because it was her boyfriend that was shot so unimpressively in the pre-credits sequence. I thought he was Jeremy Renner so was a bit confused, but what a let-down of an opening sequence. Does it compare to the other films' openings? Not even the low-key torture moment from '3'. It's a guy running out onto a roof and jumping onto an airbag then getting shot by a female assassin. And then you get the prison break - Ethan going against the plan to go back for his mate Bogdan should have been a super-cool heroic sequence, surviving by the skin of his teeth, but there's very little threat or precision in the prison doors opening and closing. At first I thought he was going back to help the prison guard who'd been attacked, but his humane character seems to have diminished in this film, although to be fair he didn't kill those people (Serbians was it?), who'd killed his wife, after all.

I was so sure Bogdan was going to be a major plot point later in the film and that he'd rip off his face and turn out to be someone else, but I was giving the writers far too much credit. The only time the essential ingredient of the masks was used was in the bad guy, Cobalt, pretending to be an underling. That Cobalt guy must really work out because Ethan could barely keep up with him in the sandstorm chase and when he fights for the case that can stop the nuclear missile inside that Indian car factory the old guy leaps around, beats up Ethan and dashes upstairs like a goat, belying his slightly podgy shape. He was a forgettable villain, and that goes for all of them too. He was a madman that wanted nuclear annihilation, he had people working for him, presumably for the same reason and apart from that he was pretty nondescript. Owen Davian in the last film was far superior, and as for the great Sean Ambrose in '2' he doesn't even come close to that intensity.

His underling was a similar nonentity, and as for the Russian Kremlin or police leader, whatever he was, he had no real story except for seeing Hunt and chasing him which left the scene at the end where there was supposed to be a meeting of the minds and showing how the US and Russia can still be friends against the common enemy of anarchic terrorism, fell flat - his character is just there throughout the film and has nothing about him to make us care in the slightest. There was also the female assassin whose character was only the extent that she was female and an assassin and liked diamonds. Why would she help Cobalt if she knew he was going to blow up the world for the next stage of evolution as he claimed? She wouldn't be alive to enjoy her diamonds - payment would be irrelevant. I don't want old-fashioned Bond-style female villains in my 'Mission: Impossible.' Keep her, but give her a character and a motive.

Maybe the series is getting too long in the tooth now and maybe they should have stopped at '3' (or even '2'), but the expectations of certain lines and visuals can only be fresh by going wrong it seems: the phone box in Russia where Hunt gets his briefing is supposed to self-destruct, but this time Hunt has to go back and hit it to make it work (a subtle dig at Russian technology or am I analysing too deeply?), which was funny to a degree, yet it was continued through the film making Ethan and his team look a little incompetent. The sticky gloves go wrong, but that's alright because it creates tension and I wanted Hunt to lose the other one too and show his free climbing skills as he did in '2.' The masks go wrong, paint spatters all over them and instead of the fantastic visual and plot twists of the other films they became a bit of a running joke. One that fell flat. Cobalt uses one to pretend to be his underling, but so what?

There were also moments that were supposed to be a bit dramatic and a bit funny such as the silly chase alongside the train carriage where the secret IMF cache is located. Hunt and Brandt have to run along typing in the code or using the retinal scan to get in, all the while dodging posts every few seconds. Did Carter and Benji not have CCTV and see them outside? There are always holes in these kinds of film, but you just have to go with it, although I think when Ethan drives the car off the ramp to crash into the floor at the end and it starts with no problem and has petrol in the tank, it would have been more exciting if he had to push it off and jump in. And nuclear annihilation prevented by dropping the missile in the drink? And Ethan going on about how they're now alone with no outside help - that's how the films always work!

I have to mention the musical score. They really should have got someone new to do it, and not stick with Giacchino who reuses some of his own score from '3' and although there is a new variation of the main theme I didn't particularly like it and it didn't get my blood pumping as it should. I was also disappointed that the theme didn't belt out during the action sequences which was something I really wanted for this film. And lose the Russian opera in the end credits and let's hear more of the theme please! I also wasn't taken with the montage, though I was very pleased they bothered with a credit sequence since so many films just start, in some cases (the Batman films), without even showing a title. I wanted a thrilling montage like the first film, but this wan't even as effective as '3'. I also must mention the shameless Apple product placement. I use Apple myself, but it's going to date this film like nothing else to see iPads, MacBooks and iPhones so blatantly used, the killer being the end sequence when Hunt hands out iPhones like Pick and Mix! I also hope the organisation mentioned at the end isn't a setup for the next film, because 'Casino Royale' did that and look how Ellipsis fizzled out.

Jeremy Renner. It seems like he's been set up to be the next Ethan Hunt (he's already taken the role of the next Jason Bourne), and while I didn't dislike him neither did he make an impression on me. I was ambivalent to him. I didn't care about him when he was an analyst, I wasn't gasping in amazement when he turned out to be this incredible ex-agent, and his most important connection with Ethan didn't even register at first as I zoned out when he was talking and then woke up when I realised he'd been talking about Hunt. It was great that Julia wasn't dead after all, but I can't help thinking that Renner's story could have been told so much better. I didn't hate the director Brad Bird on his first live-action film, but neither did I think much of him. There was the one shot of the glass tower in Dubai, when we fly towards it and see right over, but generally it was bland direction, I felt. Bring back John Woo! Or even Brian De Palma! I will say there was less shaky-cam than Abrams uses and the camera did take time over some shots, such as Ethan walking along as the fake Russian general, or when he was running full pelt at the camera (one thing that has to be in every 'M:I'!), but I was not impressed and the action scenes were still too juddery to appreciate what was going on, a disguise so that it seems more exciting, but fails.

What of the future?

It seems to me that they've set up this team as one that will continue, although I really hope not because part of 'M:I' is that it's supposed to be different team members each time, just as it's a different director and a different vision. If this is to be a series of Ghost Protocol films (bad name, should have stuck with 'M:I4'), in terms of continuity then I'm not hopeful that it will ever regain the verve and intelligence and style of the first two films. Will Hunt become the Jim Phelps figure which he seemed to take on here, and sit back while Renner does the stunts? Brandt assumes the 'position' seen in the three previous films, usually accompanied by a rope dangling a guy down, but this time a magnet holding his metal suit up and this could be seen as a symbolic gesture of passing the action man torch to him, which would be a real shame.

Cruise still does a lot of stunts, but they're more Bourne-like, flipping over a railing to get to the lower floor or using his belt to zip-wire down onto a moving van's roof and his role is too much about running the team. We don't even get to see a proper boss (not that I wanted Fishburne back - you wait five years to find out what the Rabbit's Foot was and they don't tell you!), except for Tom Wilkinson as the Secretary of State (who I'd assumed was the current head of IMF), who dies very quickly. No, they need to keep Ethan going, bring back Luther and get more people like him that we actually care about. But it will be Benji in 'M:I5' you can be sure. I expect it will be the others also, and that fills me with utter ambivalence. I won't be going to see a fifth film at the cinema, but I want the DVD to come out soon so I can see it again and reevaluate it and find out if it was just my first impression or whether it will still be disappointing.

**