MISSION IMPOSSIBLE 4

GHOST PROTOCOL

‘Your mission should you choose to accept it’ statement and the familiar toe tapping music throw us right into the action – the latest impossible mission – Ghost Protocol, an action filled, spellbinding, adventure thriller. The Imax format scenes get the adrenaline pumping for more than two hours, long enough to keep us engaged in MI world.

Starring Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt in the lead role. The rest of the team are Simon Pegg as Benji, Jeremy Renner as Brant and agent Jane, Paula Patton; the film directed by Brad Bird.

It opens in Budapest, to the well-known and exciting tune invoking the thrilling ‘Mission Impossibles’ of before. A handsome agent code-named “Cobalt” is assassinated by an attractive lady agent who disappears with documents containing nuclear codes.

A mayhem prison break is arranged allowing Ethan, an iron-man body and a focused mind, escape from his cell. He makes his way through various cell-blocks and opening-grill doors but not before he goes in search of a Russian prisoner whom he wants to save.

A seemingly impossible task for the mission team led by Ethan Hunt is to retrieve the nuclear codes before they fall into the hands of a crazy terrorist bent world-annihilation. But the documents do pass on and fall into wrong hands.

We see great aerial scenes of a Kremlin that is later bombed. When blame falls on Ethan and his team discrediting them they are disowned by the US government. The team has to conduct the operation of retrieving the codes on its own, hence the name ‘Ghost Protocol’. We move with the agents to the Dubai’s Burj Khalifa and are in the midst of hair-raising scenes: Ethan breaking through the glass window of the hotel, climbing up a sheer glass curtain wall over a 100 floors and later hurtling down it. From the finger biting scenes we go on a blinding, choking chase in a sandstorm.

Following the disappearance of the codes from Dubai the team moves to Mumbai or maybe not, looks like Mumbai. The aerial view seems genuine enough. We are set at a party in a palace of Maharaja splendour. We meet another villain, a tycoon playboy Brij Nath (Bollywood’s Anil Kapoor). The MI team’s sexy agent Jane arrives to unearth the satellite codes from the tycoon who is unable to resist Jane. But the terrorist manages to run off with the codes.

More taut scenes follow. The hero chases the terrorist with the briefcase codes, now a fully-fledged nuclear activation device, through an automated multi story car park of moving steel platforms that raise and lower cars. The two men swing and fall from floor to floor, fighting each other and are much mangled. The briefcase moves from the clutches of the terrorist to the hero and back again.

Finally Ethan Hunt and his team do manage to save the world for us. Adrenaline rush is constant throughout the film and so is humour. Many a tense moment is relieved by much wit and funny comments.

Gadgets are exciting too – gloves that stick to the sheer glass wall allowing one to climb, showing blue when they work and red when they don’t:
Blue is glue and Red is dead.
Bionic contact lenses that can take photos and decipher codes.
And a BMW concept car with a touch screen windshield that allows onscreen interface (GPS) to bring up locations and objects.
An illusion wall that can be moved to change the look of indoor locations.

Cruise loves running and we love watching him run: the tight coiled, lightning run, and we get not only scenes of his run on the ground but also up and down sheer walls.

Mission accomplished the team meets in Seattle where they part accepting new ‘missions’. We get a touching glimpse of Cruise and his wife, who now having assumed a new identity from a previous problem, exchange glances across a wide separating distance. They disappear in two different ways.

I give 5 stars.