Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol

The day before going to see this movie I saw Police Story 3, a fun movie if you suspend your disbelief and call all the cliches "conventions." Brad Bird's Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol is the American version of that movie. In either case, if you could pause the film and think about it for two minutes, all would be lost, because you would realize that for the third or fourth time, our hero is breaking into a really secure area to clear his name and stop a demented criminal with the help of his team, and is once more traveling through a bunch of exotic locations, nice cars, improvised disguises, and last-second saves. But you can't, and so you are hypnotized, because it's just as good the third or fourth time around.

This film is living proof that a good action director gets a start in animation. Not true for all cases, but definitely for this one. After The Incredibles, it's no wonder Brad Bird got it right so quickly. He has an instinctive feel for the big set pieces people thrill to - enormous cataclysms, environments that have the devilish cunning of a theme park ride, plans that juggle four or five factors at once, all ticking towards zero. I am tired of saying that while it's not great art, it's great entertainment, so I won't. In terms of making and staging good action, this film is both. 

I will grant that these guys aren't quite as skilled as the Hong Kong guys, or as crazy. But they're still talented, no matter what people say about fast cuts disguising incompetence. As in vogue right now, they do their own stunts. Not stupid enough to do it without CG or wires, but there you are. And you gotta give them credit: these stunts are exceedingly dangerous but quite fun on the screen, at times almost a lark.

Well, not always. In fact, very rarely. Part of the magic of this film is that no matter how preposterous it is, it takes itself completely seriously, and never becomes silly when it doesn't want to. It's always involving, always suspenseful, always propulsive. Some of the scenes are better than others, but none are unnecessary. The most extraordinary takes place on and in the Burj Khalifa, in the face of an approaching dust storm, and manages the always hard feat of maintaining a very high level of tension without seeming like banging over the head. Tom Cruise's timing is impeccable in that scene, as is Simon Pegg's comic Benji.

But the best part of the film isn't the action but Jeremy Renner, as analyst Brandt. He is the sidekick, the helper, the foil, but most importantly he is our guide,  our (considerably smarter) Watson. Before he breaks out skills we didn't know he had (or did we?), he gains our empathy because we can see ourselves in his place, dragged along for the ride. Then his true capabilities and his true past come out, we are moved and impressed, and by Mumbai he is as indispensable as Joseph Gordon-Levitt was in Inception. 

Let's get this straight: this film will not be fondly remembered as the event of 2011; tentpole blockbusters will overshadow it by next spring, and films with greater depth and scope will tower higher. And there's a more than slightly annoying twist at the end. But as they say, it's great fun.