copyright © Jedo Dre 2011

This movie is dumb. I am not saying this makes it bad or good. I am just stating a fact.


You know, as ridiculous as the first Misison Impossible was, it maintained one foot in seriousness at all times. Ghost Protocol on the other hand sometimes acts like a parody of itself, of spy movies in general. The first 10 Minutes in particular gave a wrong impression of the rest of the film.


As I was watching the first scene, I thought that it was going to be revealed that this is all a movie set and the guy running is an actor and then the scene will somehow segue its way to the real action and to the real main character. I was especially convinced of this when at the end of the scene there was a mobile phone with a full-screen picture of a woman with the word "ASSASSIN" typed over it in huge font, ALL CAPS. I was convinced that a movie director will now say "Cut!" and then later the actual main characters with Tom Cruise will crash through the movie set in car because they are in a high speed chase through the city or something.


But NO! The first scene was part of the movie! These were actual characters we are supposed to believe in!


.........Hahahahaha!


Thankfully most of the humour is intentional, though there still may be just a little too much of it. One of the main characters is played by Simon Pegg, who is a comedy actor and he acts as a comedy relief character in this, but the thing is, his character is very much in the foreground taking up almost the same amount of screen time as Tom Cruise's character. It doesn't hurt the movie, it's just a different tone than the one I expect from these films.


The main premise is a most cliché and unimaginative ever: something nuclear weapons and a crazy bad guy. In fact, anytime any subplots or background story raised their heads or any time the film tried to be emotional, it was dumb. But who cares? It's not important. Everything plot related is just an excuse for a particular action scene and those scenes are well worth waiting through the dumb plot.


The movie looks really impressive. The technology used by the spies looked cool, as it usually does in Mission Impossible movies. The action and the locations where the action takes place are diverse, from Russian basements to Middle Eastern skyscrapers. Acrobatics are great and Tom Cruise looks in good shape performing them.


Tom Cruise gives it his best as usual, but his character is nothing new. He plays the professional and charismatic action man he has played so many times before. A cool addition to the cast is the Russian actor Andrei Mashkov, who I am really glad is still active in movies, but the movie did not give him much to do and he could have just as easily been cut out altogether. The bad guy is a real disappointment though because there is no strong villain involved at all, just some middle-aged guy who appears every now and then, doing his villainous stuff, only saying a word or two.


MI Ghost Protocol is a technically effective action movie, but the shallowness of the story, a weak villain and a few corny scenes prevent it from being a better movie. If you are in it for good action and nothing else though then it comes highly recommended. The thing is, recently I have experienced this mindset from various people that action movies are excused from having good story because they are action movies and I disagree. I don’t see how.

Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol