A lot of people have been integrating IMAX filmed footage into their movies lately. While the best are few and far between and range from the great to awful (The Dark Knight to Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen), there’s still plenty of room to keep our mouths agape. And if director Brad Bird has anything to do with it, his live action debut, Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, seems set out to make sure that if you don’t already suffer from acrophobia, you just might after his central pièce de résistance is over.
Brad Bird is best known as the genius behind one of the single greatest superhero movies ever made (The Incredibles). And was also the man who made the world discover that yes, anyone can cook, even if it’s a rat named Remy (Ratatouille). It was only a matter of time before someone handed him a camera and a deft screenplay (courtesy of producer J.J. Abrams’ regular partners in crime, Josh Applebaum and Andre Nemec), letting him set his sights on a big-budget action film. If you thought his visuals in The Incredibles lived up that film’s title, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
In Ghost Protocol, we meet up with Ethan Hunt locked up in a Moscow prison. Benji and Co. have just arrived to break him and fellow inmate Bogdan (Miraj Grbic) out to the tune of “Ain’t That a Kick in the Head.” We’ve also seen another agent, Hanaway (Josh Holloway, Lost), being taken out by who turns out to be an assassinating blonde (Léa Seydoux) with high ambitions. Jane and Benji inform Ethan that Hanaway was killed by Sabine Moreau while they were attempting to obtain some documents. Turns out said documents just happen to be nuclear launch codes.
The codes are also being hunted down by our current antagonist, Hendricks (Michael Nyqvist). Hendricks of course just wants to use them to start an all out nuclear war. Things get a little tricky for the team however, as the IMF has disavowed all agents thanks to Hendricks setting off an explosion inside the Kremlin. Now Ethan and his crew are about to be declared terrorists right after choosing to accept their mission of finding Hendricks and obtaining the codes. But not before the Russians take out the IMF Secretary (Tom Wilkinson) with a hailstorm of bullets leaving everyone en route to Dubai to get back the nuclear launch codes and save the day.
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Article comments
1 - Steve
Really like the action scenes and the acting overall was pretty well done. The overall story line could have been better as it lacked the complexity that other spy type films often contain.