Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol (2011)

A "popcorn flick," more suitable for a summer day than Oscar season, this low-brow, action- and violence-filled romp delivers for everyone who can handle the shootings and danger inherent in this TV- series-turned-movie-franchise. Tom Cruise apparently did many of his own stunts, including swinging around near the top of the Burj Khalifa building in Dubai, the tallest building in the world. David Denby says, in the New Yorker capsule description, "The plot is utterly trivial: the world is about to be blown up by a 'nuclear extremist.' (As opposed to a 'nuclear moderate'?)" and I agree, but he, Jack, and I liked it. I covered Cruise in Valkyrie, his co-stars Jeremy Renner last in The Town, Simon Pegg last in Star Trek, Paul Patton in Precious, Michael Nyqvist in the original Swedish version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and its second and third installments. I did have to ask Jack what IMF means: Impossible Mission Force. Duh.

The opening credits are stupendous. We saw it in IMAX a few weeks ago, and wondered why were given special glasses. I kept moving them off and on, and couldn't tell the difference, other than their cheap tinted lenses made the screen darker. The locations are spectacular: they did shoot in Dubai, but substituted Bangalore for Mumbai and Prague for Budapest.

Directed by Brad Bird (The Incredibles (2004), Ratatouille) in his live-action directing debut, it is indeed cartoony. The screenplay is by Josh Applebaum and André Nemec in their feature film debut. Bird used his Ratatouille composer, Michael Giacchino (after I wrote about him in Super 8, he scored 50/50) to exciting effect. As usual, someone has posted the tracks on youtube. You will want to start with #2, which contains the theme, and move around from there. There is some great singing in the score, which I have dubbed the Moscow Gay Men's Chorus.

Good fun for lovers of the genre, this fourth chapter in the feature series still has a 93% rating on rottentomatoes, making it the ninth highest rated movie in the top 50, and still #8 at the box office last weekend in its fifth week of release.