Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol

Well, I can’t say I’ve kept up as well on movies this year. That said I did feel last year’s crop was one of the best in years and this year eh… I’m vaguely interested in Girl with the Dragon Tattoo which brings down the list of likely Best Picture noms I’m interested in to 2. I did see Moneyball but that was also a month late and I didn’t feel like shitting on Michael Lewis again (Success = legendary author evidently), movie’s better than the book. Anywho I finally saw Mission Impossible after a month of trying.

It was a solid action movie experience, nothing really outstanding except the exposet of Burj Dubai. I’m sure this movie does use CG in places but none of it is extremely obvious and the heroes don’t do anything completely infeasible (borderline). This is very rare in this day and age so I have to give props to Tom Cruise for sticking to old style film production instead of hours of green screen. Cruise may be a crazy person but that hardly hinders his ability as an actor.

The plot isn’t anything special, guy steals Russia’s Nuclear “football” to cleanse the world and pave the way for the next stage of human evolution (You Maniacs!). The film moves between 2 great set-pieces at a somewhat slow rate prior to dragging on for the last 30 minutes. Jeremy Renner shows up to reveal a major dramatic plot point that turns out not to matter in the least, even in the peripheral sense. Some lady hates some other lady for killing some dude we don’t care about, blah.

If the film didn’t drag for the last 30 minutes I’d say it was the best action movie of the year aside from Cowboys and Aliens. However, that doesn’t make it bad. I got exactly what I expected out of the experience, an above average action movie with a decent cast. The movie holds your attention up until you leave Dubai and while there’s not much chance of failure at least the heroes don’t seem to be invincible, 100 foot drops not withstanding. If you want to see an action movie prior to the trio of Avengers, Batman, and GI Joe (much better cast this time) this is probably the one. For some reason this January/February slate is pretty packed with movies so it might not be in theaters all that much longer.

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