Tom Cruise returns to his globetrotting ways as IMF super-spy Ethan Hunt, on the run with three other fugitive agents after a bombing at the Kremlin building has the team framed as terrorists, and causes intense friction between the U.S. and Russia.  The President initiates Ghost Protocol to shut down the entire IMF Agency.  Only Hunt and his team can stop the real terrorist, Kurt Hendricks (Michael Nyqvist), an extremist bent on worldwide nuclear destruction.

From the film’s opening, the excitement kicks off and rarely lets up, delivering relenting pulse-pounding action sequences.  This is Cruise’s most accomplished action film to date, and that’s saying something.  The man, regardless of his tarnished off-screen persona, is one heck of a performer.  If this fourth installment of the M:I franchise doesn’t reignite his star power, I don’t know what will.  At nearly 50-years-old, Cruise delivers a physical performance that is often stunning.  Bruised and tossed around the screen, the man flies around this film like a winged insect—running, kicking, punching, ascending, flipping, falling, flailing, you name it.  The film could have been titled Run Tommy Run.

And what about those impressive action sequences?  This is a wall-to-wall assault of a movie, but the action never becomes tedious or dull.  It totally and completely serves the story, keeping the plot in a constant motion, and invigorating this franchise with a heap of fresh and interesting possibilities.  Credit Brad Bird, a former Pixar director of The Incredibles and Ratatouille, for making a live-action cartoon that never once feels cartoonish.  The picture is simultaneously gritty and relaxed.  Bird finds just the right tone for his movie, returning the series to a team-oriented picture rather than just another Tom Cruise vehicle.

Actors Paula Patton, Jeremy Renner, and the comedic Simon Pegg round out the team quite nicely.  Everyone plays a crucial role to the events of the film.  I was not at all surprised to find this fresh change.  Cruise has consistently made every Mission: Impossible film entirely unique and different, utilizing a new director for each installment, for better or worse.  Brian De Palma delivered a twisty plot with the first mission.  John Woo excelled with balletic action sequences that took precedence over the storyline in M:I-2.  J.J. Abrams delved into a personal quest for Ethan Hunt against a cutthroat adversary in the third outing.  For Ghost Protocol, Brad Bird seeks to tip the scales for extreme blockbuster entertainment, gaining top-dollar out of every shot, and reinvigorating the team spirit of the franchise.  Even with a villain in Hendricks that seems more like an afterthought than a real threat, unlike Philip Seymour Hoffman’s menace from the 2006 film, M:I-4 still fires on all cylinders because Bird keeps the threat immediate rather than looming.

I was treated to this film in IMAX format.  30 minutes of the film was shot natively in IMAX.  The towering picture for certain sequences could described as none other than absolutely stunning.  The sequence featuring Cruise ascending the Burj Khalifa tower using questionable suction gloves is a scene that will be talked about for a long time.  Experiencing it in IMAX added to the intensity and vertigo.  Rather unbelievably, the scene was apparently filmed on the actual tower with Cruise actually dangling from it 130-some stories above ground.  How will another sequel top this?  I don’t know.  I’m calling mission impossible on that one.

As for this franchise, it’s reached an incredible high with Bird at the helm.  The series has never been better.  Action movies in general have rarely been better.  And that is no easy feat, as this somewhat underrated series has consistently delivered the goods over the last 15 years.  Lackluster villain complaint aside, this Mission is probably the most entertaining film all of 2011 has to offer, and you’d be crazier than Tom Cruise to miss it.

****½ (4.5/5)

Ok, so it’s not the most original movie out there, but Days of Thunder is a perfectly passable by-the-numbers late-80′s dude flick.  Tom Cruise plays our unfortunately-named protagonist Cole Trickle with all the vintage Tom Cruiseness you could hope for.  He knows he’s one of the biggest stars in the world, and from time to time the frame can barely contain the sheer amount of smugness on display.  Filling out the cast is a couple of acting giants–the Obi-Wan Kenobi to Trickle’s Luke Skywalker, Nicole Kidman as the no-way-she’s-old-enough-to-have-completed-med-school doctor, and even some B-listers like Randy Quaid, Cary Elwes, and Fred Thompson.  The movie is kind of a who’s who for movie stars in 1990, and for that reason alone, Days of Thunder is worth watching.

Now that's how you do product placement.

The basic idea here is as predictable as one would expect, and if you’re in doubt even for one moment how things will end up when the credits roll, it’s back to movie-watching-101 for you.  Our hero Trickle (it’s hard to even write that without laughing out loud) starts off as a disgraced race car driver eager to get back in the saddle, while his would-be mentor wants nothing to do with race car driving anymore.  But sure enough, Cruise is soon cruising (get it?  No?  You didn’t watch the trailer, did you?) around NASCAR tracks at 190 mph, dodging tires and sparring with rednecks for the elusive checkered flag.  His old mentor gets on his case for taking too many risks, and–you guessed it–Cruise’s newfound racing career is brought to a sudden halt–a trickle, if you will–when he crashes one too many times and ends up in the hospital along with racing nemesis Rowdy.

Will the two solve their differences?  Will the pretty doctor fall for the crazy scientologist?  Will Robert Duvall ever have a role as good as Tom Hagen?  It’s not rocket science, people.  It’s not even finger painting.  But it is actually a lot of fun.  Watching stock cars zoom around, crash into walls, and explode into tiny bits is a joy to behold, and it’s fun watching these A-Listers overact all the way to the bank.  Tony Scott’s fast-paced overblown directorial style is in full effect here, and as long as there’s a bucket of popcorn and 12-pack of Mello Yello handy there’s really nothing no way not to mindlessly enjoy Days of Thunder.

Rating:***½~ (3.5/5)

I’ve heard all the rumors surrounding the pain and sweat (and multiple writers) that went into getting this movie to the screen.  While I’m sorry to say the final product isn’t a masterpiece for anyone involved, it does what it can.  I wonder how many writers it actually takes to deliver next to nothing as far as the plot goes.  Seriously, the plot seems to be recycled out of Cruise’s own ‘Mission: Impossible III.’  The punchline of a star turns the punchline on the audience, playing an eccentric and wildfire secret agent, Roy Miller, involving an unsuspecting mechanic, June (Cameron Diaz), in the middle of a one-man war against the F.B.I. (or so they claim they are).  Why is Roy on the run and bagging a bunch of other agents with machine guns?  Well, because they are after a new scientific breakthrough that can antiquate the world’s primary energy sources, and Miller may be out to protect it–or steal it.  For better or worse, June is Miller’s captive, and no matter where she runs, she can’t escape trouble.  To her own dismay and hesitation, she bargains for Miller’s ‘protection’ as he sends her into firestorm of one-man army battles involving warehouse shootouts, freeway chase shootouts, and jumping out of airliners probably involving shootouts.  If you want action, you have action and then some.

Saving this mess of a script is primarily Cruise, whose charisma and self-parody adds a necessary charm and hilarity to the proceedings.  The man knows his current public image, and the only way to absolve it is to acknowledge it and play it up for all it’s worth.  There’s little to no depth to the character of Miller, only a lunatic surface that could be real or fake. Let’s face it, he’s a secret agent and everything he does is for a reason.  Maybe he’s not crazy, but he spends most of his time killing off enemies in the most outrageously dangerous fashion at his disposal.  In fact, I think many audiences will be surprised how violent the film is.  Cruise acts like he’s finished a load of laundry after killing off 30 assassins.  Diaz starts out shocked by all the chaos early on in the film’s opening sequence where Cruise single-handedly takes out a plane full of killers and proceeds to land the airliner.  Gradually she becomes engulfed in her secret agent boy toy and eventually finds herself taking part in the mayhem.  Comedy holds it all together, as Cruise and Diaz riff off each other quite nicely.  They don’t so much create characters as much as exchange banter and crooked looks.  Surprisingly, that’s enough to keep “Knight and Day” in check.  The romance goes out the window–there’s no wild passionate love scenes or heated chemistry between the two–they simply coexist in this whacked out adventure.

James Mangold directed the movie, and to my surprise you would have no idea.  The man has “Walk the Line” and “3:10 to Yuma (2007)” to his credit.   Why he decided to jump into a loosely-plotted action-extravaganza is beyond me.  He may have had a heck of a time divulging in sugar-filled summer filmmaking.  The stars couldn’t be of higher-caliber or more glamorous, the worldwide locations for filming probably made for quite the treat, and the action sequences allow him to go as big as he possibly can.  He pulls it off surprisingly well.  I really have no complaints as generic summer action-pictures go.  This one is for laughs, audacious stunts, and two veteran actors taking ten years off their age or more.  It’s no ‘True Lies,’ but it’s about on par with ‘Mr. and Mrs. Smith.’

***½~ (3.5/5)

When this movie came out I was surprised at how little attention it got from the general public.  Having watched it this week, though, I think I can understand why:  Lions for Lambs is not exactly entertaining per se, and it’s also a tricky premise to sell to an audience (especially an audience that has catapulted drivel like Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen into the box office stratosphere) because of the multi-faceted approach to telling its story.  The action unfolds in real time as senator Jasper Irving, played by Tom Cruise who looks and acts like the all-growed-up version of his Daniel Kaffe character in A Few Good Men, is being interviewed by journalist Janine Roth, played by Meryl Streep.  She gets him to spill the beans about a new strategy for finally winning the War –a plan that is being put into action in Afghanistan as they speak, and involves two young soldiers who get separated from the rest of their platoon.  The two soldiers just happen to be former students of professor Stephen Malley–Robert Redford in a role that feels as natural as any he has ever played, if a bit more passionate at times.  Malley is, at the same time this is all going on, trying to knock some real-world sense into one of his students (young actor Andrew Garfield, channeling a healthy dose of Judd Nelson’s character from The Breakfast Club), using his former students as examples of true courage and conviction, even though he personally disagrees with their decision to join the military.

The movie isn’t so much a story as it is an exploration of a political topic.  And yet, despite the intensely political nature of the film, it never gets preachy.  The characters come across as passionate but not informed and far from their stereotypical raving counterparts in so many movies today.  There are no easy answers to the solution to the War, and the viewpoints expressed by the various characters are thoughtful and reasonable as opposed to ideological diatribes.  Several express regret over past mistakes, and the media at large is even taken to task for its role in ramping up the hype for the War years ago.  However, all this serves as an interesting essay or PBS debate, but it does not serve to make the most engaging movie.  For all that I appreciate about Lions for Lambs, it does boil down to little more than 80 minutes of dialog, and the disconnected nature of the plot keeps it from being in the same league as movies like Frost/Nixon.  There is no main character to follow, no central storyline other than the peril of the two stranded soldiers, and the conflict rests mainly in the minds of the audience rather than the characters.

But it’s a fine film overall, especially for people who are looking for a more thoughtful approach to politics in their movies.