Mission Accomplished

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol(2011)

Like Mel Gibson and Harrison Ford, Tom Cruise, once a Titan of the 80s box office, and along with Tom Hanks, for a very long time, the only sure bet for bofo box office in Hollywood, has hit a rough patch since the mid 2000s. Rather unfairly in my opinion, this wasn’t so much because his films have not been as good, indeed last year’s Night and Day(2010) seemed precision engineered to exploit all and every demographic, and I thought it was ridiculously entertaining, but more because he started going a little weird publically in a Michael Jackson type way. Suddenly audiences who’d loved him for decades went anti-Cruise seemingly overnight. It must have been a very humbling lesson in fame for the man. Wisely, after all else, war movies, action comedies, etc have failed, Cruise had pulled out the biggest chip he has left, and cashed it in. His last $100 million hit was Mission Impossible 3 in 2006, so unsurprisingly dusting off his franchise seemed a no brainer. Of course straight away rumors abounded about Cruise being eased out of the franchise by younger stars etc, but I’m happy to report that the new film is a mix of business as usual but also an improvement over the expected. Probably the saddest thing about MI3 was that it was a great Mission Impossible film that a lot of people missed, partly because the anti-Cruise feelings were mounting, and partly because Part 2 had been rubbish. Ghost Protocol takes all the good work of Part 3, unsurprisingly as the director of 3, JJ Abrams, is back as producer here and pushes it even further away from the worst excesses of the series. The franchise also weirdly seems to echo the ages of man that Cruise himself is going through, If the original 1996 movie had the usual arrogant, unstoppable Cruise with his spiky 80s buzz-cut, the slightly smarmy, constantly grinning and flicking his lovely hair superman of the 2000, style over substance, sequel showing a star at his box office apex, then part 3 started to show vunerability and the character worried more about his family than career. Ghost Protocol gave me a very strange feeling watching it, because even though he still looks amazing, Tom Cruise is starting to look old, he also gets hurt in this( if in Part 3 he managed to do his usual 100 meter dash with a bomb stuck up his nose- not as funny as it sounds), then in this, he, horror of horrors, has a nasty limp at one point and actually looks nackered and unsure quite often. He also asks quite reasonably to go to the hospital at the end. I love the scene where he has to scale the building and answers back “we?” when Simon Pegg says that this is all he has to do. This is a man in touch with his own personal, and his box office mortality. Sounds depressing, well it isn’t. This is an excellent action movie, probably the best since The Bourne Ultimatum in 2007. Infact, after feeling lightweight in the past, the Mission Impossible franchise is now giving as good as it gets to the Bonds and Bournes. The setpieces are amazing but still not too ridiculous(unlike Part 2), I loved how the team is out on it’s own with malfunctioning equipment and making mistakes, and this is the first time all members of the team have been necessary and memorable, each has a personality with Pegg a welcome source of humor but not at the film’s expense. It’s probably a bit too long and the villain could have been stronger, indeed the blonde assassin is more memorable, and while I applaud director Brad Bird not giving the audience what they expect, I personally could have done with a bit more of the theme tune during action scenes as it never fails to get my blood pumping. There’s also a coda that even fans of Part 3 won’t really care about but it does have a nice sense of cyclicality about it, and they even crowbar Ving Rhames in with seconds to spare. Brilliant, treat yourself and reconnect with your inner Cruise, you’ll remember why you loved him. 10/10