When Ethan (Cruise) and his team, Jane (Patton) and Benji (Pegg) bungle
an assignment to steal some papers from the Kremlin, the building’s subsequent
bombing is blamed on them and tensions between Russia and the US reach an
all-time high. The US president issues a Ghost Protocol, which basically means
the whole of the Impossible Missions Force has been disavowed and that Ethan
and his team can no longer expect any help from the US government. Hot on the
trail of a mad scientist out to incite nuclear warfare, the team accompanied by
analyst Brandt (Renner) decide to go rogue and do their best to rectify the
situation, in a chase that takes them across the globe from Russia to Dubai to India.
The film starts with a bang. An IMF agent intercepts a
briefcase, beats the crap out of some agents tailing him, gives the rest of
them the slip, and rounds a corner then BAM! His chest is riddled with bullets
and we get our first glimpse of Sabine Moreau (Seydoux), a master assassin that
insists on being paid in diamonds. Seydoux is a mostly silent, menacing
presence in the film, and she, along with Hendricks, the mad scientist (played
by Nyqvist), is chilling.
The action sequences here are relentless, whether they’re hand-to-hand
combat scenes, gun-wielding or
busting out of a maximum security jail. However, the film peaks when the team
reach Dubai and Ethan is forced to scale the world’s tallest building from the
outside. Heart in your throat doesn’t even begin to cover the emotions that this
sequence conjures. This stunt, which Cruise insisted on performing himself, is
showcased in some amazing close-ups that show the full range of emotion on
Cruise’s face in addition to some other vertigo-inducing shots that make you
seriously question Cruise’s sanity while being thankful that he was
crazy enough to go through with it.
In addition to being gorgeously shot, the action sequences here are also
pretty inventive. One particularly notable scene is a car chase in the middle
of a sandstorm in Dubai, while a subsequent fight in a car manufacturing plant
will probably do more for the whole ‘seatbelts save lives’ campaign than any PSA. The stunts here probably took up the bulk of the budget, which
may have led them to skimp on the effects. The scenes showing the sandstorm
rolling in look very fake, while the destruction of the Kremlin also has a
cartoonish quality about it.
Cruise, Renner and Pegg make a great team where Cruise is the badass,
fearless leader, Renner is the out-of-his-depth newbie and Pegg is the
wisecracking, goofy tech guy. Patton, on the other hand, is the film’s weakest
link, acting-wise. She’s convincing when she’s fighting but her facial
expressions are forced and fake. Nonetheless, Ghost Protocol is two hours of non-stop fun, thrills and jaw-dropping
stunts.
