Missionary position

Lining up to see Ghost Protocol, the fourth chapter in Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible series, I really had to ask myself: Does the world need another chapter in the Mission: Impossible series?

In a way, yes it does. Action films lately have been decidedly dumber and louder and ADHD-friendly. It’s hard to locate a brain amid all the boom-boom explosions and super-slow-mo shoot-‘em-ups. Transformers 3 made hardly a ripple. Even James Bond’s last outing — with the yawn-inducing title A Quantum of Solace — seemed to have put the nail in 007’s coffin.

So, back to basics. Impossible Mission Forces Agent Ethan Hunt is out in the cold. When someone blows up part of the Kremlin and fingers start pointing at the US, the IMF disavows its agents in the field — they effectively become “ghosts,” out on their own, without backup or technical support. Hunt is busted out of a Russian jail by a new batch of IMF operatives — Paula Patton, Simon Pegg and Jeremy Renner — and they become an ad hoc team. Their mission, should they choose to accept it, is to stop a bad Russian named Kurt Hendricks (Michael Nyqvist) who is out to steal nuclear codes. So far, Cold War as usual. Hendricks is a “nuclear extremist” who believes nuclear war should be launched right away to separate the weak from the strong.

Paula Patton wields a big weapon and a series of tight dresses as Agent Jane Carter.

None of this is particularly important to the plot. All Ghost Protocol needs is a place for IMF to go, a bunch of high-tech hacking (supplied by Pegg, a technical field agent named Benji Dunn who also supplies the comic relief), an ass-kicker in a tight dress (Slumdog Millionaire’s Patton, playing Jane Carter), a systems analyst of dubious background to raise question marks (Renner, as Agent William Brandt), and Hunt — he of the lank, unwashed-hair look, the amazing stunts and proclivity to act like Tom Cruise.

Producer Cruise has reenlisted J.J. Abrams, a fan of the series and director of the last M:I outing, to co-produce this one, and it shows. The franchise now has more energy than the first two films combined. Director Brad Bird does get a bit hyperkinetic at times, but generally this is a smooth ride featuring action setup after action setup. So what if there’s very little character development or reflective moments for us to ask what it all means? This is an action movie, damn it!

Say what you will about Cruise’s acting, his religious beliefs, his personal life, his tendency to jump up and down on TV hosts’ furniture: he’s basically made for this kind of movie. Looking older and more rough-chiseled than previous outings (he’s almost becoming Bruce Willis in those Die Hard movies), he now legitimately captures the feel of someone always on the run, living from mission to mission. His ego does require him to remove his shirt far too many times; he now resembles Mount Rushmore more than Maverick. And one wonders how IMF agents, now completely cut off from their government resources, manage to score such high-tech weaponry and well-cut Italian suits out in the field; but this falls under the category of Thinking Too Much. Believe me, there are not too many movies out there to choose from that deliver old school explosive thrills like Ghost Protocol. 

Jeremy Renner (right) plays William Brandt, whose background is a bit sketchy in Ghost Protocol.

Of course, the advantage of Mission: Impossible from the beginning was that it was a tad smarter than, say, a Vin Diesel or Sylvester Stallone movie. Perhaps reignited by the success of the Jason Bourne movies, the M:I folks deftly combine intricate planning, high-tech gadgetry and hand-to-hand combat. Nothing is left to chance, as they say. Director Bird is basically a cartoon director (The Incredibles, Ratatouille), so he brings that level of immersion to the franchise. It’s basically a series of high-risk set pieces, such as Hunt’s scaling of the Burj in Dubai, where he must try to retrieve, oh, something or other from a sealed apartment 11 stories higher. The Burj — tallest building in the world, naturally — becomes this installment’s cliff face, allowing Cruise to exercise his penchant for dangling from very high places with one hand. Scaling the outside of the Burj at 1,300 feet — let’s see Vin Diesel pull off this stunt. Of course, the endless scroll of CGI artists listed in the end credits clue us in that it’s simply a very intricate special effect, and there’s no way in hell Cruise actually risked his life for the sequence. Still, it’s a great pulse-beating scene.

Patton here has a few good moments, basically as lethal décor, whether she’s kicking blonde assassin Sabine Moreau (added attraction: girl fight!) through an open window or seducing a rich Indian businessman/playboy (a comical Anil Kapoor) with a series of arm twists and playful slaps. The movie benefits from such levity, amid all the torturous, physics-defying chases and plunges. Pegg plays a nerd at the controls as usual, basically the same character he played in J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek reboot.

There’s really not much time to develop an interesting villain in M:I 4. Whereas the last one had Philip Seymour-Hoffman as an annoying and quite vicious opponent, Hendricks here exists in the shadows, merely a guy in a suit fleeing with a briefcase, whether at a cocktail party or in a BMW i8 Concept Car. Again, who needs character depth?

Thanks to his work in The Hurt Locker, Renner’s the new guy to watch. Whether he’s comically flexing up before attempting a plunge down an airshaft or delivering one-liners, he adds something to the party. In fact, with no romantic interest for Cruise to feign interest in (after all, he’s still married to Michelle Monaghan from the previous movie, a woman he sees only in fleeting glimpses, a perfect example of a “ghost marriage” if there ever was one), his chemistry is mostly with Renner (and okay, a little bit with Patton). In fact, his onscreen flirting with Renner (and one tactical ass-grab) raised a few eyebrows among the females in the audience.

If there’s a theme to this M:I installment, it’s basically “teamwork.” The new guys are all thrown together with little preparation or bonding time. At one point Hunt wants to go it alone (cue shots of Cruise scowling, walking in age-inappropriate hoodie and iPod buds, listening to the details of his next mission), but he soon sees the necessity of having a crew he can rely on. He comes off here as the elder captain of the team, which is a far cry from the first Mission: Impossible, where he was the callow crew-cut guy taking orders from Jon Voight. Indeed, much is at stake here for Cruise, at his perilous age, to plunge back into a genre that has brought other, older action stars to the brink of self-parody (think of action retiree vehicles like The Expendables). Somehow, he — or rather, the team — manage to pull it off. Well done. Mission, um, accomplished. 

Simon Pegg supplies comic relief as super nerd Benji Dunn.

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Allow me to mention here that National Book Store and Powerbooks have been stocking my two Anvil titles, Simianology and Kano-Nization: More Secrets from the X-Pat Files, in great numbers this holiday season. So pick up copies to give as gifts to those you wish to baffle or amuse, respectively.