It may not be The Incredibles, but there is some fairly incredible stuff to be found in Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol, animation ace Brad Bird’s first live-action film and a good continuation of the then 16-year-old series. The impact of spectacular action on striking international locales is moderated somewhat by the repetitive nature of the challenges faced by this rebooted team of American agents trying to thwart a villain who believes that a nuclear winter would be in the natural order of things. With Tom Cruise in top form here and IMAX presentation enhancing some of the key sequences, this Paramount release should add substantially to the total of a franchise that has hauled in $3.6 billion to date.
As commercial cinema goes, animation and live-action are seen as divergent modes of filmmaking sharing the mutual goal of aesthetic cohesiveness; they only achieve it by different means. While Avatar and The Adventures of Tintin achieve a melding of live-action and animation techniques, other examples suggest that the sensibilities of animation and live-action are more disparate and incompatible. Given the standing casualties, it would be reasonable to expect that Brad Bird, the venerable and considerably gifted director of Pixar greats Ratatouille and The Incredible, would encounter similar difficulties working in live-action as did Adamson and Stanton. Bird’s first project in the non-animated realm would pose a more considerable test than those of his predecessors, both of whom were essentially handed the reins of a new film franchise.
If the translation from animation to live-action weren’t already revealed as problematic by the previous examples, the challenge of making the fourth entry in the moribund Mission: Impossible franchise would be potentially as significant. Yet, despite these (and forgive me for saying) impossible conditions, Bird makes Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol work. It succeeds not only as of the resurrection of a franchise but also as an exercise in the rarefied practice of artful action filmmaking. Whether the story makes a bit of sense is hard for me to say, as I certainly can’t recount it very well. More importantly, this fourth Mission: Impossible makes visual sense.
The script is fairly basic, but the screenwriters are savvy enough to acknowledge that audiences have moved on from Ethan Hunt and the IMF. Thus, the fancily titled Ghost Protocol isn’t framed as the next inevitable mission, as was John Woo’s forgettable second film. Nor does it fall into the trap of grounding its conflict in the personal life of its protagonist. No, the screenwriters instead opt for a “dismantle and disavow” approach, with an opening that sees fellow IMF-ers busting Ethan out of a Serbian prison. Immediately following the breakout, Hunt is framed for the destruction of the Kremlin and along with his fellow agents must go on the run. And run he does.
In Moscow, Dubai, and Mumbai. He runs into, on top of, and between cars. He runs down buildings, in front of monuments, and through sandstorms. But I’ll be damned if Cruise’s sprinting isn’t put to great use here, as he chases a villain bent on a nuclear levelling of the entire planet. The origins and motives for this villain, played by Michael Nyqvist, could certainly have used a bit more development, as could have those of the female sub-villain played by Léa Seydoux. Ghost Protocol rather focuses squarely on Cruise and his new protégé, played with icy joy by Jeremy Renner, cashing in on the intensity of his standout performance in Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker.
Cruise and Renner together is a surprisingly good match, particularly since the film is patient to reveal each character’s ultimate motivations and keeps them both in the pure business model. While Cruise is the de facto leader and gets the lion’s share of screen time, Bird and company smartly project Ethan Hunt as a guiding paternal figure. The other members of the team, including Simon Pegg and Paula Patton, each have a function and serve it well, both in contrast to and in cooperation with Cruise’s holy sprinter’s status. Despite serving up a buffet of your standard spy ingredients, Ghost Protocol aces the formal test. Bird goes to painstaking degrees to ensure that the action on screen, though busy, is visually coherent. Given its clarity, the film’s action may be interpreted as a rebuke of the current chaos aesthetic that characterizes many recent action blockbusters.
But Bird isn’t a rigid classicist in his approach to action or even simpler scenes of dialogue. He maintains the urgent, at times frenetic tone that J.J. Abrams brought to the franchise in the previous film, Mission: Impossible III. Abrams is a producer on Ghost Protocol, and his artisan touch is evident throughout. Honouring this approach but shifting its emphasis, Bird crafts each sequence with stunning attention to how each shot connects to the next. Where Abrams sees a series of shots serving the purpose of a single shot and idea, Bird makes each shot matter. Despite this being his first live-action effort, Bird operates like a veteran of action moviemaking. More importantly, the seamlessness of the motion between shots fashions a sense of dimension and space for a given setting, scene, or composition.
Performance-wise, Cruise is in total command of the drama which boasts of several engaging twists and turns. A word about Anil Kapoor: he plays playboy Brij Nath with a penchant for pretty girls and shady deals, in a comic vein. It is just a bit more than a blink-and-you’ll-miss role as Patton unleashes her charms on him. Ghost Protocol is fairly standard material given the best treatment, which alone qualifies it as one of the more noteworthy movies released last year. It’s a fine-tuned machine, and as such stands as a moniker of the simple pleasures of seeing compact movement on-screen. This, after all, is the universal quality that bounds and defines cinema live-action or animated.
