Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol

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Year:	2011
Country of origin:	USA / UAE
Director:	Brad Bird
Genre:	Espionage guff
Starring:	Tom Cruise, Jeremy Renner, Simon Pegg, Paula Patton
Rating:	4/5
IMDB link:	http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1229238/
Tagline:	No Plan. No Backup. No Choice.
Favourite line:	"The countdown isn't helping."

Some five years after the last installment, Mission Impossible 4 was always likely to be a hard sell but, despite this, two weeks at the top of the charts both here and on home soil suggests people are flocking in droves.
So what's all the fuss about?

The plot:
Ethan Hunt (Tom's Bruise), IMF's top agent, is imprisoned in a Moscow jail. Happily, his team are determined to break him out and, shortly afterwards, they are assigned a mission to infiltrate The Kremlin to obtain vital files. Halfway through the mission, new information comes to light and they are forced to abort. As Hunt flees The Kremlin, the building explodes in a shower of CGI goodness.
America responds swiftly, invoking Ghost Protocol, so now Hunt and his cohorts must establish precisely who was responsible for the attack, else be labelled terrorists for the rest of their days.

It's piffle.
It's a Mission Impossible movie, so of course it is, but that doesn't stop it being unrelentingly entertaining.
Bruise is starting to look his age - maybe he hasn't been 'auditing' quite enough down at The Church - but that does nothing to dampen his enthusiasm for character building stuntwork. Sure, most of it is green screen stuff, but still, those flexing muscles were not the product of computer generated imagery.
With a globe trotting plot that takes in Moscow, Dubai and Mumbai, this has the feel of a good old fashioned espionage yarn, with some high technology modern wizardry thrown in. It flags towards the end and, at two hours fifteen, is clearly half an hour too long, but that's about the only flaw to find here.
This winter's blockbuster season continues to surprise, then, following the equal success of Sherlock Holmes 2.
Pleasantly enjoyable daftness.