After Brad Bird rebooted Tom Cruise’s fading MI series as a witty update of a Roger Moore-era James Bond thriller in GHOST PROTOCOL/’11, writer/director Christopher McQuarrie took over the series for more of the same in #5. Too much more of the same, upping the quotient of fun & games relentlessly into a joyless franchise with eyes on the foreign market.* Cruise and Paramount must have been happy though, since he’s back for #6 (7 & 8, too!) with the longest MI yet. (By nearly half an hour!) The usual Spy vs Spy nonsense (with silly rubberized faces) brings international intrigue & arbitrary crosses, double-crosses and ‘surprise’ turnabouts as our gang of ‘Impossibles’ pursue three missing orbs of plutonium timed to go off in Kashmir and wreck half the world’s water supply. The action scenes are fast, furious and exhausting; also impossible to figure out/read, which should be half of the fun. Instead, Tom relies on his energizer bunny routine, clenching his jaw to hide any recent face work. Talk about mission impossible!
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: I know it’s part of his job description as Group Techie, but must Ving Rhames be the only guy shown carrying bags in the pic as if he were the MI porter? Sheesh.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Stateside grosses barely (or simply not) keeping pace with ever growing budgets.
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