Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol is a 2011 action spy film, and the fourth installment in the Mission: Impossible series. It stars Tom Cruise, who reprises his role of IMF Agent Ethan Hunt, and is director Brad Bird’s first live-action film. Ghost Protocol was written by André Nemec and Josh Appelbaum, and produced by Cruise, J. J. Abrams (director of the third film) and Bryan Burk. It is the first Mission: Impossible movie to be partially filmed using IMAX cameras. The film was released in North America on December 16, 2011. (Wikipedia)

The story of Ghost Protocol is simpler than the elaborate charades you made up as kids. Smoked out of a Russian prison, Ethan Hunt and his renegade team, have to hunt down a Russian scientist with nuclear launch codes and save the world.

Along the way are some derivative dialogues, some presences at making up subplots and but nevertheless a star who’s committed to the art of the action sequence.

But let’s be clear, the Mission: Impossible series is exactly was it’s supposed to be: a finely tuned action machine, and the latest instalment in Ghost Protocol offers cutting-edge escapism that’s almost guilt-free. Anybody expecting a Fellini film with a car chase is just being difficult for difficulty’s sake.

And when it comes to action no one does it better than Cruise. His work ethic is meticulous and anybody who’s willing to jump out of the Burj Khalifa gets my vote hands down.

 

 

 

 

 

The film thus ends up being a never-ending action ride from the windows of the world’s tallest building, to the tunnel under the world’s worst prison to the streets of Mumbai and into a parking lot apparently located in India, but which you know will not exist in the country for the next few decades.

 

 

 

From the perspective of the series as a whole, Ghost Protocol is easily the best instalment since the first one in 1996.

Your mission should you choose to accept it is 132 minutes of mind and reality bending action scenes,  beautiful women, fast cars and a turbo charged escape from the banalities of every day life.