Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011)

For the fourth entry in the Mission: Impossible series the producers sought out Brad Bird for his live action debut, and it turns out to have been (surprise surprise) an excellent decision. What results is a fast, slick and highly entertaining blockbuster that sits right up there with the best the series has offered in the past.

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Tom Cruise returns as Ethan Hunt, this time when his team is framed for an attack on the Kremlin he and his IMF team are firced to go underground. Working with limited resources and no backup they have to figure out who set them up and stop their plans to spark worldwide nuclear war. It's a neat premise (even if the bad guy's motivation is suspect at best) and one that allows the 'team' aspect of the franchise to take centre stage. It also allows the filmmakers to have their cake and eat it, by displaying much of the super-cool futuristic tech (a device for concealing progress down a corridor was a favourite) but also stopping the team from relying on it too much, as they are often entering situations here under-prepared and out of their depth.

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Joining Cruise this time are Simon Pegg reprising his role from the third film and excellent by the way of comic relief, along with Jeremy Renner and Paula Patton, the four of them work well together and Bird stages some expertly crafted and nerve-wracking set pieces throughout the films running time. The most famous of these is Cruise's ascent up the Burj Khalifa hotel in Dubai which is truly astonishing, especially if you catch the film in IMAX.

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Given how much I love all of Bird's previous films there was a touch of disappointment about Ghost Protocol which was really inevitable, it lacks any real depth of character or story and has moments that make very little sense in hindsight, one involving a reveal of a masked character seems to have come from a dropped subplot or earlier draft as it has no logical place in the story we end up seeing. That said the film is constantly entertaining, frequently funny and has a surprisingly tense and satisfying conclusion, it just falls short on a character level leaving a lot of spectacle but not much lasting resonance.

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But not every film has to have that, and on the whole this is far, far better than any fourth film in a series has any right to be. A lot of that is down to Bird who's obvious knack for action cinema is highlighted here, his confident hand steers the film through its own absurdity and ensures that the Mission: Impossible franchise is as healthy as it's ever been. After this I would be more than happy to see future instalments involving this team if they were all as much fun as this.