Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol” is easily the most entertaining movie of 2011. And if you take each movie premiered during the year, and weigh what the people who made it set out to do against how well they accomplished their goals, regardless of genre, it could also be the best release of 2011. Yes, it’s that good.
The people who made “Ghost Protocol” set out to make a nail-biting espionage thriller, an edge-of-your-seat action picture, and the mother of all comeback vehicles for its star, Tom Cruise. And in each case, they delivered in spades.
Under the auspices of Brad Bird, the director of “Iron Giant,” “Ratatouille” and “The Incredibles” (yes, those are all animated movies, and yes, this is Bird’s first live action picture), the thriller aspects of “Ghost Protocol” are some of the best executed set pieces in recent memory. There’s a scene in the first half of the movie in which Cruise’s character, IMF agent Ethan Hunt, and computer whiz Benji break into a file room in the Kremlin using a contraption that hides their presence while projecting an image of the hallway behind them, allowing them to pull off their caper while a guard sits at a reception desk at the end of the corridor. The scene is tense, brilliantly staged and masterfully edited. Bird has complete command of the scene, right down to the choice to have no music and only a little sound.
The action scenes are nearly as good. There are several spectacular sequences, but the one in which Hunt and the main villain go mano-a-mano over control of a briefcase in a 20-story car tower - a high tech cross between a vending machine and a parking garage - tops them all. I read that filming took place on an actual set that took six months to build. The end result is stunning.
Then there’s Cruise, who not only stars in “Ghost Protocol” but also produced it. Over the last few years, he’s been in a few less-than-stellar movies (I’m looking at you, “Knight and Day” and “Lions for Lambs”), and his controversial public behavior and views have tarnished his career. None of this matters while watching “Ghost Protocol.”
Cruise not only delivers on the dramatic front, his energy and dedication to realism during the action scenes is likely unmatched in the history of Hollywood. Consider the scene in which Hunt scales the famed Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world, located in Dubai. According to several reports, over 90 percent of the shots in that scene feature Cruise, clinging to the side of the building a couple of thousand feet in the air.
I realize the fight scenes and other stunts in “Ghost Protocol” were done on the confines of a movie set, but still, Hunt gets brutalized in this movie, and I can’t believe Cruise didn’t place his neck on the line more than a few times to deliver a great shot and keep the audience immersed. At no point did an obvious stunt double take me out of the movie.
I should include a few words about the plot. “Ghost Protocol” centers on the attempts of Hunt and three other IMF agents to stop a madman from unleashing a nuclear holocaust. Although it sounds like a goofy James Bond-style plot, writers Andre Nemec and Josh Applebaum play it serious, and it works. The story also moves fast, so you’ve got to pay attention, even though it’s cleanly written. Best of all, it’s never boring, which is saying a lot for a movie that runs longer than two hours.
My only quibble about “Ghost Protocol” is that the script relies too much on Hunt “knowing a guy” and “having friends” in certain places to get out of a scrape.
If any part of you enjoys action movies, see “Ghost Protocol” while it’s in theaters, as the Dubai scene alone makes it worth seeing on a big screen. More than that, though, it’s superbly made on every level and a lot of fun. I hope Bird, Cruise, and the rest of the gang get together to make another one.
Rated PG-13 for scenes of intense violence and action. Four stars out of four. Email David Laprad at dlaprad@hamiltoncountyherald.com.