And there’s Tom Cruise, taking centre stage in an ensemble, but sharing the screen far more than last time around (there’s no drippy romance shoehorned in, either). From that confident opening, the pieces of the plot fall into place. It's a prison break, that tips its hat very slightly to the oft-maligned underrated Bruce Willis caper, Hudson Hawk, and gradually introduces as it goes more and more franchise elements. It kicks off with a sequence that at first comes across as serviceable at best, before gradually, skillfully escalating. Valuing silence as much as it does fast edits, the film sees Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt and his IMF team working alone, in another race against time to stop another world-ending threat. Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol is a whole lot surer, at least for three quarters of the way. Save for one or two impressive sequences, it was a long away from Brian De Palma’s franchise opener. I thought it cut away at the wrong moments, was a little impatient, wasted a potentially great villain, and that it was too Cruise-centric. Appreciating that Mission: Impossible III was quite warmly received, I was never that sold on it. Because mark this as a franchise back on track.
The audacity, calmness and confidence of it is staggering, and it’s the centrepiece of a really quite strong Mission: Impossible movie. To say this particular sequence is exhilirating barely does it justice. The heights of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, as it happens, as director Brad Bird drags Tom Cruise up to the top of the world’s tallest building (all 2716 feet of it), dangles him from near the top, and then points an IMAX camera at him. It’s stating the obvious, perhaps, but Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol takes action cinema to new heights.
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