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DIRECTOR Brad Bird CAST Tom Cruise, Jeremy Renner, Paula Patton, Michael Nyqvist The fourth in this series of blockbusters sees the Impossible Missions Force (IMF) forced underground to clear its name when blamed for a terrorist attack on the Kremlin. Cruise is back as secret-agent Ethan Hunt with a high-adrenaline series of stunts including swinging mid-air off the Burj Khalifa, Dubai, currently the world’s highest building. (2011 USA 133 minutes) AUDIO DESCRIPTION AVAILABLE - Please contact the cinema in advance This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it This is not just another mission. The IMF is shut down when it's implicated in a global terrorist bombing plot. Ghost Protocol is initiated and Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his rogue new team must go undercover to clear their organisation's name. No help, no contact, off the grid. You have never seen a mission grittier and more intense than this. BBFC advice: Contains moderate action violence Further Parental Advice “Tom Cruise is out to prove something. When is he not? Of all modern movie stars, he may be the one most eager for constant validation, as if he’d curl up and die if we ever thought he was past it, or merely coasting. See, he can play funny and bald (Tropic Thunder), mean and murderous (Collateral), or a Nazi (Valkyrie), if required. Today, Cruise must prove that there’s fresh life in the Mission: Impossible franchise, though, in fairness, the commercially underperforming third one was pretty solid. How better to do it than jump, in person, off the tallest building in the world? ... a lot of credit goes to Cruise here, who’s succeeded over these four films in making Ethan Hunt into a strangely intriguing alter ego. Hunt, like Cruise, is itchily uncomfortable in his own skin – they’re both drawn to disguise – and we spot signs of fatigue, of here-we-go-again, which give him mature grit and appeal. The movies may force Cruise to show off, to scale mountains and skyscrapers like a sinewy circus performer, but those gritted pearly whites betray an underlying reluctance: when Pegg pats him on the back in dubious reassurance before the Burj ascent, you feel a weird jolt of sympathy for the star, however much he’s pocketing. Then he’s out and clambering, 124 floors up, with a sandstorm brewing on the horizon, and the raw thrill of vertigo sweeps you up and away.” “Cinema's most respectable hoodie Tom Cruise is back, slouching moodily out of the poster for the latest enjoyable Mission Impossible caper, directed by Brad Incredibles Bird. He is Ethan Hunt, leader of the International Missions Force or IMF – wiry, taut, fiercely focused, unfeasibly buff for a man of any age, never mind 49... In Hunt's team is the gorgeous Jane (Paula Patton), the beta-plus warrior male Brandt (Jeremy Renner), and the comedy one, Benji, played by Simon Pegg, who really rather often manages to steal the movie. (Realising no one likes the ideas he's proposing in a tense strategy meeting, Benji blurts out: "I'm just spitballing here; it's not all going to be gold.") The best sequence is a gobsmacking vertigo nightmare: Ethan has to climb out of a high window of a tall tower in Dubai and inch along the side of the building. That's a very woozy experience on Imax. There's some great gadgetry: particularly a portable gauze camouflage screen that permits Ethan and Benji to creep up a Kremlin corridor invisibly – a very surreal moment. The film sags a little during later scenes in India, and Ethan has a slightly baffling kissing moment with Jane, leaving us unsure exactly how much sexual chemistry we are supposed to expect between Cruise and Patton, given that this tragic widower is still supposed to have tender memories of his departed wife. But it's solid entertainment.” UK RELEASE 26 December 2011 RUNNING TIME 133 minutes COUNTRY USA |
