Review: Mission Impossible IV

Greetings and Merry Christmas or Happy Hanukkah to you. Last week was a busy movie week for me. I saw the new Sherlock Holmes movie and Wednesday I saw the opening of Mission: Impossible, The Ghost Protocol. As always, if you choose to continue with this review, you may see spoilers. This message will continue in 5..4..3..2..1

This is the fourth in the Mission Impossible franchise, which is based on the television series of the same name. Rather than Jim Phelps, (Who the film makers offed in the first film), the star is one Ethan Hunt played by Tom Cruise. The movie was directed by by Brad Bird and written by, if anyone wants to admit to writing this, Andre Nemec and Josh Applebaum.

Now before you assume I hated this movie, I didn’t. I just thought the plot was very weak and could have been much better. I think they could have done with more plot development and a lot less CGI, as you will see further on.

Now the theater. As usual, I went to my favorite watering hole, Chunkys Cinema Pub. I had steak tips, medium, pub fries and a garden salad. I also had a glass of Sam Adams seasonal. For desert I had this chocolate brownie thing I really shouldn’t have eaten.

I was expecting a large crowd so I went to the late showing and arrive a good 30 minutes ahead of the show. Surprisingly, for all the noise about this film, the theater was only about 1/3^rd full. The food, as usual was good and I was able to get a good seat.

Now to the movie.

The film opens with a mission not involving Ethan Hunt going wrong. The agent is killed by an assassin and dies in the arms of his lover, (And extremely good looking), fellow agent Jane Carter, played by Paula Patton. Agent Carter is then tasked to break Ethan Hunt out of a Russian prison. At this juncture, it isn’t known why Ethan is in jail, however he is broken out in typical IMF style. Carter’s team unlocks the cells and lets out some people I really think I don’t want to get to know as a distraction. Ethan, rather then head to the extraction point, instead wades into the other convicts and beats them to a pulp. It turns out he is rescuing another convict. They get to the extraction point and escape.

Ethan is checked out by Carter and it turns out that an old friend of Ethan’s is now a field agent. This is Agent Benji Dunn, played by Simon Pegg, who was last seen in MI III as a technician who helped Ethan save his wife. After all the introductions, Ethan goes to the typical IMF secret message system, in this case a payphone, and gets his assignment. It’s here that we figure out that Ethan Hunt had been disavowed yet again. Now he is being welcomed back into the fold.

Once Ethan gets his mission, we get the usual “This message will self destruct in 5 seconds” routine, however, it doesn’t. Ethan pauses and turns around when he realizes the phone didn’t go up in a puff of smoke. He walks back and smacks the phone which then melts down. This is where we see how the film is to proceed.

Previous Mission Impossible films have been very dark. The writers and director apparently decided to put in a few moments of levity to break things up a bit. I suspect everyone has been wanting to see the self destruct not work and they put this in to satisfy that itch.

The mission is for Ethan and team to break into the secret Kremlin archives and steal some information that will identify someone code named Cobolt. Benji accompanies Ethan and you can see just how green he is for this sort of mission. They do the usual IMF technical thing, in this case a special screen that projects a background image directly at the guard at the end of the hallway. Ethan gets into the records room and find the information is already gone.

As he’s figuring out what to do next, someone breaks into their frequency and alerts the Russians. Ethan and Benji start their escape. Ethan happens to pass someone with a case and keeps on going. Once he is outside, there is a massive explosion and the Kremlin has a large section destroyed. Ethan is caught in the blast and knocked out. When he comes to, he is in a hospital and cuffed to the bed. A Russian police agent comes in and addresses him as “Team Leader’ and accuses him of planting the bomb.

As you might expect, there is a dramatic escape. Ethan meets up with the infamous Secretary and an analyst traveling with him where he finds out that the Ghost Protocol has been initiated by the President and that the entire IMF has been disavowed. On top of this, Ethan is to be made the fall guy for the attack on the Kremlin. The Secretary knows this is nonsense and gives Ethan a new mission. Just as Ethan and the Secretary are finishing up gunfire hits the SUV they’re in and the Secretary is killed. Ethan grabs the Analyst, William Brandt, played by Jeremy Renner, pulls him down when the driver is killed and the SUV goes into the river.

Eventually Ethan and William make it to the rendezvous in a train car and meet uyp with the others of the team. This is where they find out that the person Ethan saw was Cobolt, who is actually Kurt Hendricks, a Swedish-born Russian nuclear strategist who believes the weak must die for the strong to survive, so he plans to start a nuclear war to initiate the next stage of human evolution. Hendricks bombed the Kremlin and acquired a Russian nuclear launch-control device, and now needs its codes from the Budapest courier that the assassin took at the beginning of the film in order to launch a nuclear missile at America.

Ok, and here is where we go off the deep end. Rather than come up with an intriguing plot, the writers and director went with the old stereotypical “Mad Scientist out to destroy the world” bit. This was old 50 years ago and it hasn’t aged well at all. In MI 2, they had a genetically engineered virus that the bad guys were going to use to get rich with. I hope if there is an MI V that they get some writers with some original thinking. (And they wonder why people aren’t going to movies anymore?)

The team heads to Dubai and the tallest building in the world. Since the team is disavowed and the Ghost Protocol is now in effect, they have no backup to help them break into the building’s computer systems. The only way is for someone to get into the server room and hack the server. Normally, Benji would be the one to do the hacking, but he is not capable of scaling the building. This means Ethan is at it again.

They remove a window on the on the 100^th floor, or thereabouts, and Ethan climbs up several stories. It’s the usual excitement, Will Ethan Fall to his death? Oh HELL no! Of course he won’t! The hack is completed and Ethan gets back to the room the team is using. The team then engages in the traditional IMF sleight of hand and misdirection so loved in the original series. However, William is wearing a special contact lens and the assassin spots it. She started trying to kill him and he surprises everyone with his hand to hand ass kicking abilities. Jane Carter beats the crap out of the assassin who killed her lover and manages not to kill her. (They need her alive at this point)

The assassin, Sabine Moreau, played by Léa Seydoux, attacks the inexperienced Benji Dunn and gets into a cat fight with Jane Carter. Eventually, Carter kicks Moreau out the still open window on the 100^th floor. Sabine becomes a red spot on the pavement about a minute later.

And here we have another problem with the movie. That building has the most advanced HVAC systems in the world. If a window falls out, or as in this case, is removed, the facilities people ARE going to know about it. Not to mention that the building is pressurized somewhat. You would have a virtual hurricane blowing through that gaping hole. I won’t go into the monitoring systems in the server room Hunt breaks into, again by smashing a window.

Anyway, Ethan confronts William Brandt. He wants to know how an analyst is able to kick butt so well. It turns out that William was a field agent, but had a mission go badly wrong. He decided he didn’t want to be in that situation again and transferred to a desk job. He has been working for the Secretary since then.

William talks to the others after Ethan has left and admits the mission he blew was to guard Than and his wife in Serbia. The mission went wrong and Ethan’s wife was killed. Ethan then went rogue, hunted down the Serbian hit team and wiped them out, which is why he was disavowed and put in a Russian prison.

Any, it’s of to Mumbai in India to find a businessman who has a satellite communications system that Kurt Hendricks, the Evil Scientist, needs to launch a nuclear missile and start World War III. In Mumbai, Ethan and Jane Carter, (Who looks HOT in an evening gown), go to the businessman’s party and play IMF games. They get the codes to the satellite, but Hendricks has already used them from a television station to send the launch commands to a Russian missile sub. They verify the command and proceed with the launch against the United States.

Another chase and Ethan ends up in a parking garage out of Star Trek. Ethan and Hendricks, who is remarkably good at kicking Ethan’s ass for a scientist, duke it out, fighting over the case with the launch codes. Eventually, Hendricks plummets to his demise and Hunt gets the case. He then sends the abort command just as the missile reaches San Francisco. The warhead crashes through a building and into the bay.

Again, I have an issue with this. First, the launch of a nuke is highly regulated to prevent just such an unauthorized launch. Even though tensions are high, the Russians on the sub would probably seek further clarification. This isn’t the old Soviet Union and no one is looking to start a nuclear war…except the Iranians. The second problem was the actual missile. Didn’t the people doing the CGI do a Google search on nuclear warheads? They don’t stay attached to the missile. They are released so they don’t have to drag the missile along with them. And what’s this about disarming it after launch? I don’t think so Tim! Once the missiles leave, they are going to go KABOOM unless they malfunction.

Ok, back to unreality. 🙂

After the successful stopping of the missile, IMF is reavowed. The team meets in San Francisco where Ethan introduces them to his pal from the earlier films Luther Stickell played by Ving Rhames. Luther has other things to do so says goodbye. Ethan then breaks out 4 cell phones and puts them on the table. He wants the other three to be part of his team. Benji and Jane say yes and pick up their phones. William says no and admits to Ethan that he was supposed to protect him and his wife and that he failed.

Ethan says he knew about that mission and that it was all a fake. His wife is alive and well and in hiding. It was the only way he could protect her. This information relieves William of the guilt he has been carrying and he accepts the phone and joins the team. Ethan then spots his wife across the water and watches her. She turns and spots him and smiles then moves on. Ethan then gets a call and walks off into the fog.

End credits.

So, how did I like the movie? It did meet my criteria even with the gaping holes I’ve mentioned. I was entertained and I think you will be as well, so long as you leave that thing called LOGIC and COMMON SENSE, at the door. 😉

So yes, I do recommend seeing it. I’ll probably by it once it comes out on DVD.

That’s all folks!

This review won’t self destruct in 5 seconds. 😀

~The Angry Webmaster~

(5 votes, average: 1.00 out of 5)

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