Tuesday 3 January 2012

Review of Mission Impossible 4

This is not my usual cinema fare - I tend to wait for such movies to appear on TV or whatever but sometimes you gotta get out of the house.

I will readily admit that I *enjoyed* it as an entertaining, action led film. Otherwise there is perfect reason to label it pants on the grounds of story, plot, yada yada. I still don't really get the whole IMF thing and why it always blamed for stuff - the sort of cathartic release that Ethan Hunt's character gets from putting that all behind him at the end of MI3 gets kind of wiped clean away.



*SPOILER ALERT*
There just was no character drive other than to stop the Russian whacko starting a nuclear war. It would have been more interesting if the antagonist wasn't bad just for the sake of it. As a result, Ethan has nothing to overcome other than crazy stunt work. The only character to have a 'battle' of some kind was the agent chick and well, that was dry as...as the Sahara. Actually the 'analyst' character does have an arc per se but again that's just resolved by a conversation, yet that was a relatively 'intelligent' dynamic, I suppose.

But the fact that it's directed by Brad Bird means you don't really linger on such issues - you get propelled along and the visual spectacle doesn't disappoint. You cannot help but be impressed by Cruise's shimmying up the what's-it hotel in Dubai. But that tracking device working in a sandstorm - pssht, yeh right! And I love how Ethan happens to pick up the most trendy leather jacket from some random washing line, with badass hood and evra-tin!

There was a fair few laughs generated by Simon Pegg's character (plus the 'Bollywood' scene with Anil Kapoor was major - for once he was in the *perfect* role!) and the jet setting between locations gave it a Bond-like feel but otherwise the film didn't feel punchy enough, though it left it with a sweet moment and the promise that the gang can get back together to another impossible mission of some kind, always operating underground, while we mere mortals plod on obliviously.

But I did enjoy it, despite all that it lacked - weird, right? Lunar activity clearly...or probably because it wasn't in 3D!

VERDICT: 6/10

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