Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (Evan's take)

I have decided that 2012 will be the year that I make my return to the Blogosphere. I figure this is the best time to start since I will only have to do this until December...according to Roland Emmerich.

So...with that in mind, we kick things off with "Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol".

Now...

I feel I need to put all my cards on the table here. I was firmly entrenched in the "Tom Cruise is insane" camp and I was fairly certain that there was no way that I could get excited for any movie with him in a leading role...(Not to mention the fact that his teeth creep me out...Why can't your teeth line up with your face!!!...Wait...I covered this already). What made me worry even more is that Tom Cruise is listed as a producer on the movie. This made me think that the only way this movie got made was that Cruise had to put his neck (and pocket book) on the line because everyone else thought he was a washed up nut job...

And then I saw the trailer for M:I-GP:


And I had to admit...It looked pretty darn good. Plus I was really excited to see Simon Pegg AND Jeremy Renner. (As an aside...whose star will shine brighter in 2012? Jeremy Renner or Tom Hardy? Seriously, those two are on meteoric stardom trajectories...IMDB those dudes!).

Then...I started seeing the critics' buzz. 93% on Rotten Tomatoes...That's in "Dark Knight" territory which is (in my opinion) among the movies ever made. EVER!

So I came to the stunning realization that the IMPOSSIBLE had happened (see what I did there?), I was excited for a Tom Cruise vehicle and could not wait to see it in theaters. And I must say, it did not disappoint!

M:I-GP is the type of popcorn movie that I love. There are action sequences galore, great comedic relief (expertly provided by Mr. Pegg) and all the cool gadgets that people would expect in a spy movie. I even liked how they poked fun at the use of masks in previous installments of the franchise. It was as if they had figured out that it got to be pretty ridiculous in the second and third movies and decided that enough was enough. I especially liked how their electronic mask making machine broke (conveniently?) and they were forced to enact their plan using their own faces.

M:I-GP is by no means a perfect movie. The ridiculously convoluted plot is really just a way to skip from one location to the next (How do go from Russia to Dubai to San Fran and end up in Seattle??? Watch M:I-GP!). And obviously the BS meter jumps off the scales in certain scenes (but unearthly physics makes for really cool explosions and flying cars!). However, if you can get past these shortcomings, then it is a great mindless use of ~2hrs of your life. Plus, there is a dizzying scene that takes place at the Burj Dubai tower that had my fear of heights working overtime which was really fun! I think what is most impressive is that this was the first live action movie directed by Brad Bird, whose previous directorial experience was limited to animated films like "The Incredibles" and "Up". Considering that this was his first effort with real video cameras, I am excited to see what his future movies will look like.

So for me, Mission: Impossible- Ghost Protocol gets a score of 4 crazy nut-job Tom Cruises out of 5 action hero Tom Cruises. Yeah...that seems about right.