One of 2011's best films, Brad Bird's "Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol" is a triumph. Injecting life into a plateauing franchise, the film is a crisp and charismatic action epic that is both exciting and propulsive.

All the right pieces come together to make this fourth Mission: Impossible film stand out. A Bondian dose of exotic locales, a story that ties together Cold War tension and New World rogues, and a gallery of well-cast characters combine to form a solid cinematic foundation for the film. Brad Bird's sure-handed direction leads the audience through the intrigue and generous action beats of the plot. Moreover, the film is shot handsomely and edited with a mind on forward motion.

The numerous set pieces…

A hugely successful action film that can really be boiled down to the skills of one man: Brad Bird. He understands storytelling through action set pieces like so (frighteningly) few directors do, and knows a thing or two about distilling tension with humor and leading each scene to an inevitable conclusion without any predictability along the way. The Dubai set piece is action ballet. Talk about a smooth transition from animation to live action. You'd think there would be an enormous amount of difficulty in this (John Carter), but years of storyboarding every shot to perfection and tightening a story through the process of mapping out each shot can pay off tremendously, and it did.

The cast is having loads…

Here's the thing about Ghost Protocol [EXPLOSION].

See that I lulled you into a false sense of security and then flipped things on their heads with unexpected action.

That's not so much what you'll get here, because when you think about the Tom Cruise era Mission: Impossible, you expect action. You think: is there a chance that chap might be a little bit gay? You think: surely this time they've bitten off more than they can chew and they can't possibly prevail at the end of the story, can they? You think: implausible helicopter in the channel tunnel, and what exactly was the best-case-scenario the pilot was counting on there?

That degree of implausibility is old hat, we have entirely…

What did I learn from Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol? Let me see. There are a lot of BMWs in Dubai and Mumbai (coincidence?) and they have safety features you can trust, and cool start controls, and cool wheels and cool grill-lights, what? I haven't seen such gross product placement in a while. Oh yeah, and iPhones. iPhones are cool, iPads are cool, apparently USB cables are cool; but iPhones in rubberised cases? I guess they might knock them around a bit, but still: uncool (like that haircut).

The gadgets were excellently rendered, but severely over the top. I guess I prefer more human spy action. Gadgets became long set-pieces, if not missions in themselves; I suppose they're cool, but…

There's a sequence early on in Ghost Protocol that involves veteran super agent Ethan Hunt and green non-super agent Benji Dunn breaking into the Kremlin. Like all of the big action sequences and other super agent activities in the film, it's some of the slickest action you'll see on a movie screen. In a movie filled with thundering explosions, cracking gun fire, and crunching punches to faces, there's a portion of the Kremlin break-in that is almost completely silent. It's quiet at real super-agent levels, and it's brutally intense (and hilarious). The Kremlin sequence, as well as the Dubai sequence and the Mumbai sequence (not really spoilery stuff, since basically every super spy movie involves a great deal of globe-hopping),…

"Where is Ethan? ... You gotta be kidding me!"

"Ghost Protocol" is certainly not as tense as "M:I-3" was but instead embraces being a popcorn action movie to the fullest extent.
It has a lot of self-referential moments, poking a little fun at the whole Mission Impossible thing and Tom Cruise not being in his mid-thirties anymore. Luckily it never goes the "Blade: Trinity" way of becoming a parody of it's own franchise, as it's still a great spy thriller and a very entertaining and spectacular action film.

Ethan Hunt's core team features the great and charismatic Paula Patton, the always funny and likeable Simon Pegg and Jeremy Renner.
Rumour has it Renner is (was?) to take over the franchise.…