It
seems as though all a cinema enthusiast like myself is treated to these days is
reboots, sequels, spin offs and board games being made into movies (is everyone
ready for Battleship?), but sequels don’t carry the same stigma they once did.
Gone are the days of churning out a cheap Friday the 13th or Police
Academy every year because it’s the flavour of the month (though the Paranormal
Activiy people are stretching in anticipation of beating the dead horse, with
the 4th being released in 2012), and now we see the day of the modern
sequel which is made for the same reason as it has in the past, that it’s a safe
investment and even a bad one will make it’s money back, but a bad one could
also see the death of a franchise (see Spiderman 3. The image of Peter Parker
dancing with his emo hair still wakes me up in a cold sweat), so a lot more
effort goes in to make sure it’s a winner. Unless there’s a solid script movie
studios struggle to get a good directors, the core actors from the previous
movies and at this point the movie going public can smell a flop.
Now I’m very anti-spoiler, so I’ll tread carefully. The film starts with
an amazing sequence involving the IMF (Impossible Mission Force) busting Ethen
Hunt (Cruise) out of a Moscow
prison, so they can all get onto the real mission – getting nuclear launch
codes from a nutcase and avoiding WW3/The end of the world. This doesn’t
quite go to plan, the Russian’s get all pedantic about the state the Kremlin
ends up in, and the IMF get’s disbanded, leaving Hunt and his team labelled as
international terrorists and the job of saving the world while staying under
the radar. Sounds easy enough? Well to pull all this off they’re going to need
some cool gadgets (without going to ridiculous levels. Remember the
invisible car in 007 Die Another Day? Remember what I said about franchise
killing sequels?), one of the greatest girl fights I’ve ever seen on screen,
lots of explosions, ticking clocks, poison darts and gun fights.
I’d definitely say this is one of the better films in Tom Cruise’s Mission
Impossible series if not the best, but it’s not completely without fault, I
feel the inclusion of Simon Pegg as one of the main characters is unnecessary.
These films just don’t need someone there for comedy relief. Don’t
get me wrong, I think Pegg is a brilliant comedy actor/writer/director, but dry
English wit is not what this movie needs. It’s almost like the producers
were getting their dividends paid after getting him in MI3 when his career was
on the way up, and were now cashing in at the peak of his popularity. I
don’t feel that his inclusion hurts the movie at all; I just think the movie
would have been just as good without him.
Some of the shots in this film are breath taking, so when seeing it keep in
mind that this is not only director Brad Bird’s first action movie, it’s his
first movie with real people! His experience is with animation; his
directorial CV includes the Incredibles and Ratatouille, so what he achieves in
MI4 is made all the more impressive.
Plain and simple, this movie is great fun, and a solid action/spy movie.
If you go in ready for fun, you won’t be disappointed.
