Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011) Review

"Next time, I get to seduce the rich guy."

-William Brandt

After a mission goes horribly wrong and ends with the destruction of the Kremlin, the President of the United States is forced to initiate Ghost Protocol; the entire Impossible Mission Force is shut down and disavowed.  With no backup and their gear not working properly, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his team have to improvise on the fly to find a way to stop Kurt Hendricks (Michael Nyqvist) from starting a nuclear war.

What Works:

Ghost Protocol has easily the best team in the entire Mission: Impossible series, even without Ving Rhames.  Apart from Ethan, each member of the team brings something to the table, but has their own flaws and hang-ups.  Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg) is a new and inexperienced field agent.  Jane Carter (Paula Patton) lost an agent, who she loved, on her last mission and is grieving and aching for revenge.  William Brandt (Jeremy Renner) is seemingly just an analyst and has no business being in the field,  but has a dark past that he keeps secret from the others.  This team is imperfect and that is what makes them so interesting.  In the first three films, the teams are well-oiled machines that, for the most part, know exactly what they are doing.  This isn't the case here and the movie is all the better for it.  It addition to the flawed team, the shut-down of IMF is another interesting facet.  Ethan's team has no backup.  They have no one to rely but themselves.

Another great aspect of the film is nothing works in this movie.  I mean, none of their gear works.  Frequently, Ethan Hunt relies on gadgets and masks to get the job done, but their gadgets consistently break throughout this film.  They don't even get to use any masks because the machine breaks down.  It's an interesting spin for the Mission: Impossible series.  Nothing works, the team is flawed, no one can help them.  The team being constantly on the edge of utter catastrophe really ramps up the tension of the film.

The action scenes are probably the best of the entire series.  The entire Dubai sequence contains everything one could want from a Mission: Impossible film.  We get a death-defying stunt from Tom Cruise, we get a tension filled trick being played on the villains, and we get one of the best chase scenes in the series with a sandstorm to boot, and this is all in just one of the locations.

The opening is also fantastic and I love watching Ethan fighting his way through a prison while Dean Martin is playing.  It's a really memorable and fun way to kick off the film.

We also get one of the funniest scenes in the series with Ethan and Brandt trying to get into a movie train car that they can't open without punching in the code and a retinal scan.  It's a silly sequence that is perfectly placed into the movie.

Finally, the final fight between Ethan and Hendricks is great.  The parking garage is a really excellent location for the showdown, which is essentially a high-stakes game of keep-a-way.  It's really fun and interesting because it's not a straight up fight.  It's two guys who are getting progressively more and more injured trying to get ahold of a briefcase.  It's really entertaining and a great climax to the film.

What Sucks...Sorta, But Not Really

The only complaint one could make about this film is that it has easily the least memorable villain of the series.  It's not that Hendricks is bad, it's just that he doesn't get much screen time.  It's a fair critique, but it's not one I am willing to hold against the film.  The rest of the series is frequently about Ethan's relationship with the villain, but this film is not about that at all.  It's about this flawed team trying to hold it together, with the villain and his plan merely being the background for the far more interesting team dynamics.  This movie isn't about the villain and I am totally fine with that.

Verdict:

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol is the best film in the series.  It has the best team by far, with flaws and interesting dynamics, a worthy premise that takes the IMF and the gadgets away from Ethan, and the best action sequences of the series.  Some may complain about the villain essentially being a background character, but I think it allows the movie to stay focused on the team dynamics, which I find extremely interesting.  Without a doubt, this movie has got it going on.

 10/10: Amazing