A Ghost of a Chance

I passed on the newest Mission: Impossible film when it came to theaters last year. At the time, I actually didn't even consider going to see it, given my thoughts on the previous films.

The first movie was a decent enough action movie, but a real travesty of a "Mission: Impossible" story, disrespecting the team dynamic and one of the classic characters that the original series was based on. I was quite disappointed, overall. I don't remember how I got talked into seeing the second movie, but it was a complete mess -- a non-sensical, noisy action showcase for Tom Cruise. I would have passed on movie three after that, but then J.J. Abrams stepped in to direct it. I loved the first two seasons of Alias so much that I had to assume he'd do something decent with an action spy movie. Well... better than the predecessors, at least. But honestly, I can't today remember much of anything that happened in that movie.

So, a fourth Impossible movie? No thanks, I'm out.

But then a funny thing happened. The critics rallied around it and declared it was actually a good movie. More importantly, several friends of mine saw it and reported back, "no really, it actually is pretty good!" I broke down and tossed it into the Netflix queue.

They're right. It's not too bad a movie. Certainly (although I realize this is faint praise after what I just wrote), it is the best film of the series.

This Mission: Impossible film finally, at long last, embraces the format of the original television series. An outrageous, high stakes mission requiring an entire team of elite operatives, each with specialized skills, to carry it off successfully. Tom Cruise's returning character, Ethan Hunt, is just one quarter of a group that all get star moments, great set pieces, and heroic saves throughout the course of the film. That's what it's supposed to be.

Though this movie finally adds what was missing to the mix, it wisely retains elements that did work well in the previous films -- chiefly, the outrageous technology. With the arrival of Jason Bourne, spy movies have tacked sharply away from implausible gadgetry. The newest James Bond movies have followed that mold. And so it's a breath of fresh air to see the a film built around masks that allow you to perfectly impersonate a person, projector screens that can track and display a false environment in real time, gloves that let you scale buildings like Spider-Man, and more. These implausible gimmicks lead to unique action sequences of a kind that you just don't see anymore. And assuming you can suspend your disbelief, they're quite tense and exhilarating sequences.

Director Brad Bird is helming a live-action movie here for the first time, following films like The Iron Giant and The Incredibles. He brings from that experience a great eye for framing shots. The movie looks fantastic. He also reigns in the crazy from Tom Cruise, while getting solid performances from co-stars Jeremy Renner (himself about to do the other kind of spy movie in the next Bourne film), Simon Pegg, and Paula Patton.

Composer Michael Giacchino delivers a really impressive score. Making liberal use of Lalo Schiffrin's original TV theme, harnessing the same wild enthusiasm from his early work on Alias, and adding in everything he's learned in more than a decade of writing scores, he kicks the action into overdrive.

The weak element of the movie is the script. The plot is straight-forward enough, and the justification for most of the crazy action makes sense enough. But the exposition lands with a loud thud, and it's only through the efforts of the actors that you don't always notice how ridiculous the dialogue is. There's also a bad "epilogue" that makes the movie drag on nearly 10 minutes after it should rightfully end, tacked on just to tie the film back to earlier entries in the series. (Films which, like I said, are best forgotten anyway.)

After the solid box office performance of this film, the studio is said to be circling another one. If this is the mold they follow, I'm likely to give the next one a shot. I wasn't blown away in the grand scheme of things, but very pleasantly surprised beyond my expectations. I rate it a B-.