Rating : 4/5
Genre : Action/Thriller
Year : 2011
Running time : 2 hours 13 minutes
Director : Brad Bird
Cast : Tom Cruise, Paula Patton, Simon Pegg, Jeremy Renner, Mikael Nyquist, Anil Kapoor
Kid rating : PG-13
We got in half an hour early for the MI4 show, and had trouble finding 4 seats together. Did find them though after a single guy was nice enough to move a few spots. Once seated, an usher came in and asked everyone to scoot up and make space, because they were expecting a full house. MI4 is running only on IMAX here, so you could not see it on “regular” screens now even if you wanted to (you’ll have to wait another week for that), which is some sharp business strategy, btw; IMAX tickets cost 50% more than regular tickets. And shows are going houseful!
Impossible Mission Force (IMF) Agent Ethan Hunt (Cruise) is extricated from a Russian prison so that he can get to work on his next critical mission. And it is to stop a Swedish scientist/terrorist Hendricks (Michael Nyquist) from obtaining nuclear launch codes and setting off the warheads. Hendricks bombs the Kremlin and cleverly implicates the IMF in it, causing the Russians to take umbrage and the US President to declare “ghost-protocol”, i.e.; the IMF is dis-avowed and it’s agents persona non grata. Hunt and his 3 associates Benji (Simon Pegg), Brandt (Jeremy Renner) and Jane (Paula Patton) must go underground, and still complete the mission, sans support from the US government.
This MI installment takes us to Moscow, Dubai (in one stunt Cruise walks up the Burj Khalifa, with spiffy magnetic gloves) and Mumbai. The coolest stunts and dialogues are for Cruise, who at 50, is not as fit as he used to be, but delivers. Pegg is Benji, the computer whiz, while Patton plays Jane – the female agent who’s pretty and curvaceous but deadly. And Renner is Brandt, the “analyst” who is the late addition to the team. The villain is well portrayed by Nyquist, known for his role as Mikael Blomquist in the Swedish original of the “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” series.
Anil Kapoor plays Brij Nath, a rich Indian tycoon. The IMF team lands in Mumbai in pursuit of Hendricks and crashes Brij Nath’s party in the hopes of extracting information from him. Kapoor’s role is a caricature (all 2 minutes of it), where he is a dapper, gullible lech, falling quickly for the firang in the low-cut gown. He is, as I tweeted, a non-smart doofus with ungrammatical English (“Indian mens are hot”. Ouch! And Ewww!)
The film is non-stop action with some beautiful stunts and some hi-tech gadget-work. The story is standard action-thriller fare, so realism, gravity and nuance take a back-seat. The locales are beautiful, direction crisp and thrills aplenty. The climax is shot in Mumbai, in a space-age multi-level automated parking garage, which apparently was constructed specially for the film. The film seemed very Bond-like to me, with it’s stylish opening credits, plethora of deadly assassins, high-tech gadgetry and fight sequences. Bullets zinged, bombs exploded and the snap-crackle of action was everywhere.
This is an engrossing thriller executed with wit, style and panache – well worth a watch.
