Jason KingMISSION IMPOSSIBLE: GHOST PROTOCOL: A Review
December 11th 2011 07:09
:
Best action in the series
Category: Reviews
This is not just another mission. The IMF is shut down when it's implicated in a global terrorist bombing plot. Ghost Protocol is initiated and Ethan Hunt and his rogue new team must go undercover to clear their organization's name. No help, no contact, off the grid. You have never seen a mission grittier and more intense than this.
So I invite good friend Olly to join me for a Sunday screening of MI4 and we commence with two beers at a Darling Harbour pub prior to the screening. Head on over to the screening to discover I haven't read my invite properly and it was actually the premiere of the film at IMAX Darling Harbour. I was completely under dressed but the nibblies and free drinks made me soon forget this. Worst part of the evening was that I missed seeing and/ or meeting my favourite Australian actor Zavier Samuel who turned up looking very dapper
I was very excited that I would be seeing this film in IMAX, I have only seen one full length film on the IMAX Darling Harbour screen a few year's back (Beowulf) and thought MI4 would be a great action film to see on the big big big screen and considering director Brad Bird filmed certain sequences in IMAX it should be amazing.
While certain IMAX sequences looked brilliant and were seriously causing vertigo it was way too large a screen to sit through an action film of this magnitude. To read subtitles (very few) you literally had to play tennis with your neck and read it all the way from left to right and some of the high paced action scenes were lost in a blur of motion that took away from the cinematography of the film.
That being said this is the biggest action flick to hit our screens in months and it is HUGE action that is taken to the next level and then squared. It wasn't just 'lets have a massive car chase through Dubai', it was 'no, let's do it in a sandstorm'. 'It wasn't let's burn down an important building in Russia, it was let's blow up the Kremlin'. I see John McClaine standing up and cheering at this action level.
Tom Cruise is brilliant in the film, it was so good to see him back onscreen doing what he does and the dedication this man has is beyond compare. God knows what the insurance was for him to do his own stunts of this enormity. And Cruise is this film, everyone else is his back up - he holds every scene and does beyond what is required of an actor. Lucky he takes all those Scientology vitamins.
But action and Tom are about it unfortunately. The action is relentless and the film is about 20mins too long with one too many action short films that I thought would never end. Twice I thought it would end and it carried on. Now I loved every action sequence but it was matched with a convoluted and unnecessary plotline. It was true Mission Impossible styling and the plot matched it but where I felt the first film held a style and pacing this one was a bloody rocket ship that tried too make the story as complex as possible so as many action sequences could be completed at the cost of the plotline.
If you take this film as a series of action short films on watching Tom Cruise do "mad shit" then this film is a masterpiece and the film of the year but putting them all end on end and matching them with a plot creates the convoluted story that was.
And don't get me wrong, the action with a sandstorm in Dubai looked amazing and had me on the edge of my seat but, seriously, was the sandstorm necessary? And the carpark action sequence was spectacular but it just never ended, I was in requirement of a toilet by this stage and it is impossible to get to the end of your row in IMAX as the seats are so close together and on such a steep incline I was afraid of falling a dozen metres or so over the top of people
The back up actors are all admirable, Simon Pegg was Simon Pegg, this is not a horrible thing but I have seen it before with him plenty of times. The guy is still fun to watch don't get me wrong and was comic relief for the film. Paula Patton (Deja Vu, Precious) is enjoyable to watch and quite the ballsy and beautiful woman, she gave as good as she got. And Jeremy Renner, I am loving him more and more on film and while I found him and Cruise an odd match onscreen he is a great support actor in this one and I liked the clashing personality types of them both. Bring on more Renner films I say!
Brad Bird directs some of the best action I have seen on film but it is a pity, as previously mentioned, this was let down by the overdone action and convoluted story. Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol is out this Thursday 15th December and if you want some of the best action onscreen then buy that big combo and boysenberry choctop and get those buns into a cinema seat! Worth 6 out of 10.
So I invite good friend Olly to join me for a Sunday screening of MI4 and we commence with two beers at a Darling Harbour pub prior to the screening. Head on over to the screening to discover I haven't read my invite properly and it was actually the premiere of the film at IMAX Darling Harbour. I was completely under dressed but the nibblies and free drinks made me soon forget this. Worst part of the evening was that I missed seeing and/ or meeting my favourite Australian actor Zavier Samuel who turned up looking very dapper
Xavier Samuel attending the Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol Premiere
I was very excited that I would be seeing this film in IMAX, I have only seen one full length film on the IMAX Darling Harbour screen a few year's back (Beowulf) and thought MI4 would be a great action film to see on the big big big screen and considering director Brad Bird filmed certain sequences in IMAX it should be amazing.
While certain IMAX sequences looked brilliant and were seriously causing vertigo it was way too large a screen to sit through an action film of this magnitude. To read subtitles (very few) you literally had to play tennis with your neck and read it all the way from left to right and some of the high paced action scenes were lost in a blur of motion that took away from the cinematography of the film.
That being said this is the biggest action flick to hit our screens in months and it is HUGE action that is taken to the next level and then squared. It wasn't just 'lets have a massive car chase through Dubai', it was 'no, let's do it in a sandstorm'. 'It wasn't let's burn down an important building in Russia, it was let's blow up the Kremlin'. I see John McClaine standing up and cheering at this action level.
Tom Cruise is brilliant in the film, it was so good to see him back onscreen doing what he does and the dedication this man has is beyond compare. God knows what the insurance was for him to do his own stunts of this enormity. And Cruise is this film, everyone else is his back up - he holds every scene and does beyond what is required of an actor. Lucky he takes all those Scientology vitamins
.
But action and Tom are about it unfortunately. The action is relentless and the film is about 20mins too long with one too many action short films that I thought would never end. Twice I thought it would end and it carried on. Now I loved every action sequence but it was matched with a convoluted and unnecessary plotline. It was true Mission Impossible styling and the plot matched it but where I felt the first film held a style and pacing this one was a bloody rocket ship that tried too make the story as complex as possible so as many action sequences could be completed at the cost of the plotline.
If you take this film as a series of action short films on watching Tom Cruise do "mad shit" then this film is a masterpiece and the film of the year but putting them all end on end and matching them with a plot creates the convoluted story that was.
And don't get me wrong, the action with a sandstorm in Dubai looked amazing and had me on the edge of my seat but, seriously, was the sandstorm necessary? And the carpark action sequence was spectacular but it just never ended, I was in requirement of a toilet by this stage and it is impossible to get to the end of your row in IMAX as the seats are so close together and on such a steep incline I was afraid of falling a dozen metres or so over the top of people
The back up actors are all admirable, Simon Pegg was Simon Pegg, this is not a horrible thing but I have seen it before with him plenty of times. The guy is still fun to watch don't get me wrong and was comic relief for the film. Paula Patton (Deja Vu, Precious) is enjoyable to watch and quite the ballsy and beautiful woman, she gave as good as she got. And Jeremy Renner, I am loving him more and more on film and while I found him and Cruise an odd match onscreen he is a great support actor in this one and I liked the clashing personality types of them both. Bring on more Renner films I say!
Brad Bird directs some of the best action I have seen on film but it is a pity, as previously mentioned, this was let down by the overdone action and convoluted story. Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol is out this Thursday 15th December and if you want some of the best action onscreen then buy that big combo and boysenberry choctop and get those buns into a cinema seat! Worth 6 out of 10.
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