“Mission accomplished!”

Among my friends I’m one of this small group of individuals that can say that I am always looking forward to a Mission Impossible film. I’m also one of this small subsection of society that can say that I loathe Mission Impossible 2. I downright love with J. J. Abrams did with the series with the third installment and when it was announced that he would remain involved in bringing back the franchise for its fourth installment with Brad Bird (The Incredibles) as the director I immediately jumped on the #Ghotocol bandwagon.

If I were to attempt to describe the plot of a Mission Impossible film it would overall a series of small successful operations that each accomplishes small tasks to eventually get Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his team closer to the bad guy at hand. This film, unlike all the others, has all of these operations but at the same time never really has them succeed at any point – until the exact end when we need them to.

After the initial setup where Ethan and his team are on their own after the Kremlin attack and the initiation of “Ghost Protocol” we see for the very first time, in a small amount, a sense of limited possibilities with what Ethan and his team can actually do. In previous films you will see them list all the insane things that they need to overcome in order to complete an operation and Ethan will smile at them as the rest of the team thinks he’s crazy and then we’ll watch them pull it off with some of the most insane execution because at the end of the day their resources are almost unlimited. In this iteration we get a handful of moments where even Ethan can’t believe he’s about to do something, like say climb up the side of the tallest building in Dubai, add to that fact that they just keep failing to meet their goal each time and you have a film that tests our hero’s real mental ability to keep going.

I’ve been hearing about the land of IMAX for the past two years without actually able to see what it really means until today. I was able to see this film at an IMAX theatre, and while I do have a couple of quibbles with the setup of the theatre, I must say that watching a film like this – especially during certain key sequences, like the Dubai hotel scene – is astounding at times. At times you’re not quite sure where you should be focusing on the screen but the film and the event driven sequences just end up enveloping you entirely in a way that you can’t imagine if you’ve never seen a film like this in IMAX.

While the world, and I in a small part, have been on a Jeremy Renner high since his appearance in The Hurt Locker I’m not sure how pleased I would be with an MI5 with him as the next point man. I don’t think he has much to offer a film like this. He isn’t the charismatic lead that Cruise is who you just want to keep following deeper down the “Impossible” rabbit hole, but rather someone who you feel you have to be dragged down with. I would much prefer an episode of the MI films with Josh Holloway who makes a short-lived appearance in the opening scene of the film.

Otherwise everything else remains status quo with the series… so enjoy.

Rating: 7.5/10