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| Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011) () |
IMDB Rating: 7.7
Released: Dec 21, 2011
Rating: PG-13
Genres:
Action, Adventure, Thriller,
Sub Genres:
Spy,
Running Time: 133 minutes
AKA: MI4
Country: USA, United Arab Emirates
Language: English, Russian, French
IMDB Link: Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol on IMDB
Official Site: Official Site
Views: 7,083
Plot: On assignment in Budapest to intercept a courier working for a person of interest code-named "Cobalt", IMF agent Trevor Hanaway is killed by assassin Sabine Moreau. Hanaway's team leader, Jane Carter, and newly promoted field agent Benji Dunn extract Ethan Hunt and Hunt's source Bogdan from a Moscow prison. Hunt is recruited to lead Carter and Dunn to infiltrate the secret Moscow Kremlin archives and locate files identifying Cobalt. During the mission, someone broadcasts across the IMF frequency, alerting the Russians to Hunt's team. Although Dunn and Carter escape, a bomb destroys the Kremlin, and Russian agent Sidirov arrests Hunt, suspecting him as part of the attack.
The IMF extracts Hunt from Moscow. The Russians have called the attack an undeclared act of war, and the US president activates "Ghost Protocol", a black operation contingency that disavows the entire IMF. Hunt and his team are to take the blame for the attack, but they will be allowed to escape from government custody so that they may track down Cobalt. Before Hunt can escape, the IMF's secretary is killed by Russian security forces led by Sidirov, leaving Hunt and intelligence analyst William Brandt to find their own way out. The team identifies Cobalt as Kurt Hendricks, a Swedish-born Russian nuclear strategist who believes the weak must die for the strong to survive, so he plans to start a nuclear war to initiate the next stage of human evolution. Hendricks bombed the Kremlin in order to acquire a Russian nuclear launch-control device; however, he now needs the activation codes from the Budapest courier in order to launch a nuclear missile at America.
The exchange between Moreau and Hendricks's right-hand man, Wistrom, is due to take place at the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. There, Hunt's team-members separately convince Moreau and Wistrom that they have made the exchange with one another. However, Moreau identifies Brandt as an agent. While Hunt chases Wistrom?only to realize that Wistrom is actually Hendricks in disguise, escaping with the codes?Carter detains Moreau. Moreau attempts to kill the inexperienced Dunn, and Carter throws her out a window to her death. Brandt accuses Carter of compromising the mission for revenge against Moreau, but Hunt accuses Brandt of keeping secrets from them, as he has displayed fighting skills atypical of an analyst. While Hunt seeks more information from Bogdan, Brandt admits he was assigned as security detail to Hunt and his wife Julia in Croatia. While Brandt was on patrol, Julia was killed by a Serbian hit squad, prompting Ethan to pursue and kill them before he was caught by the Russians and sent to prison.
Bogdan and his arms-dealer cousin inform Hunt that Hendricks will be in Mumbai. Hendricks facilitated the sale of a defunct Soviet military satellite to Indian telecommunications entrepreneur Brij Nath. The satellite could be used to transmit the order to fire a missile. While Brandt and Dunn infiltrate the server room to deactivate the satellite, Carter gets Nath to reveal the satellite override code. But Hendricks has anticipated Hunt's plan and turns off Nath's servers before sending a signal from a television broadcasting tower to a Russian nuclear submarine in the Pacific to fire at San Francisco. Hunt pursues Hendricks and the launch device while the other team-members attempt to bring the broadcast station back online. Hunt and Hendricks fight over the launch-control device before Hendricks jumps to his death with it to ensure the launch. Dunn kills Wistrom, allowing Brandt to restore power to the station and enabling Hunt to deactivate the missile. Hunt is then confronted by Sidorov, who sees Hunt has stopped the missile, proving the IMF is innocent in the Kremlin bombing.
The team reconvenes weeks later in Seattle. Hunt introduces the team to longtime colleague Luther Stickell and then issues new assignments. Dunn and Carter accept, but Brandt refuses. Hunt reveals that Julia's death was staged, as he knew he could not protect her, and used her death as a pretext to infiltrate the prison and get close to Bogdan, an IMF source on Hendricks. Relieved of guilt, Brandt accepts his mission while Hunt watches Julia from afar. They share a smile before he embarks on his next mission.
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| Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol Movie Review |
Source: Roger Ebert
Article: "Mission: Impossible -- Ghost Protocol" is a terrific thriller with action sequences that function as a kind of action poetry. The best one has Tom Cruise hanging more than 100 stories up on the glass windows of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the world's tallest building. He has been equipped with gloves that cling when slammed against a surface and release when they are curled back.
Tricky enough in concept alone. But it has been claimed that Cruise "insisted on doing his stunts himself." Say what? The character Ethan Hunt is seen like a human fly clinging to glass, thousands of feet in the air, and you're telling me we aren't looking at CGI? If that's really Tom Cruise, he seems like a suitable case for treatment.
If it is or isn't, the sequence is one of the most spellbinding stretches of film I've seen. In the way it's set up, photographed and edited, it provided me and my vertigo with scary fascination. The movie has other accomplished set pieces as well. It opens with Ethan Hunt's breakout from a Russian prison. There is a staggering fight scene inside a space-age parking garage where moving steel platforms raise and lower cars, and the fighters jump from one level to another. There's a clever scene in the vaults of the Kremlin Archives in which a virtual reality illusion is used to fool a guard. And a scene at a fancy Mumbai party in which Indian star Anil Kapoor thinks he's seducing MI team member Jane (Paula Patton) in an elaborately choreographed diversionary technique.
Ethan and Jane are joined by Mission mates Brandt (Jeremy Renner) and Benji (Simon Pegg) in an attempt to foil a madman named Hendricks (Michael Nyqvist), who has gained control of a satellite and possession of Russian nuclear codes, and wants to start a nuclear war. His reason, as much as I understand it, is that life on Earth needs to be annihilated once in a while so it can get a fresh start, and Hendricks is impatient waiting for a big asteroid to come along in his lifetime.
The movie benefits greatly from the well-defined performances of the Mission team. Cruise, hurting from the death of his wife (remember her in the third MI picture?), plays a likable man of, shall we say, infinite courage. Simon Pegg, with his owl face and petulance, is funny as Benji the computer genius, one of those guys who can walk into the Burj Khalifa with a laptop and instantly grab control of its elevators and security cameras. Paula Patton is an appealing Jane, combining sweet sexiness with vicious hand-to-hand fighting techniques. And Jeremy Renner's Brandt, entering the plot late as an "analyst" for the IMF secretary (Tom Wilkinson), is revealed to have a great many extra-analytical skills.
Brandt and Benji have a scene that reaches a new level of action goofiness even for a "Mission: Impossible" movie. Brandt's mission, and Ethan makes it clear he has to accept it, is to wear steel mesh underwear and jump into a ventilating shaft with wicked spinning fan blades at the bottom. Benji will halt his fall with a little mobile magnet at the bottom of the shaft, so Brandt can break into massive computers. Renner does an especially nice job of seeming very scared when he does this.
The movie has an unexpected director: Brad Bird, the maker of such great animated films as "The Iron Giant," "The Incredibles" and "Ratatouille." Well, why not? Animation specializes in action, and his films are known for strong characterization. You'd think he'd been doing thrillers for years.
Now I want to get back to Tom Cruise, who we left clinging to the side of the Burj Khalifa, allegedly doing his own stunts. I'm not saying he didn't. No doubt various unseen nets and wires were also used, and at least some CGI. Whatever.
I remember a story Clint Eastwood told me years ago, after he made "The Eiger Sanction" (1975). There's a scene in the movie where Clint's character dangles in mid-air at the end of a cable hanging from a mountain. He's thousands of feet up. Clint, who also directed, did the scene himself.
"I didn't want to use a stunt man," he said, "because I wanted to use a telephoto lens and zoom in slowly all the way to my face — so you could see it was really me. I put on a little disguise and slipped into a sneak preview of the film to see how people liked it. When I was hanging up there in the air, the woman in front of me said to her friend, 'Gee, I wonder how they did that?' and her friend said, 'Special effects.'" |
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