Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol (2011)

Film: Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol
Stars: Tom Cruise, Paula Patton, Simon Pegg, Jeremy Renner, Michael Nyqvist
Director: Brad Bird
Oscar History: Is it weird that this franchise has never made it with AMPAS, even in Sound or VFX?  Considering it's increasingly well-received by critics, you think it would have landed.  Either way, no, nothing from Oscar.
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Tom Cruise is a great movie star.  He may be crazy, but he's truly a great movie star, and one of my favorite screen presences when he's actually firing on all cylinders.  His movies, though, have increasingly become more banal.  It's hard to imagine Cruise ever playing a risky role again like he did in Magnolia, or hell, even doing a straight-forward romance like Jerry Maguire.  His only forays into something outside of action-adventure in the past decade have been in a comedic film where he was actually not taking much of a risk at all (Tropic Thunder-even if the movie was a dud "whoa-that's Tom Cruise?!?" was always going to save him) and a musical that no one remembers (Rock of Ages, anyone?).  He might still be a matinee idol, but it's hard to get excited about him in the movies anymore from a critical perspective, and increasingly he resembles more Harrison Ford or Sylvester Stallone (going back to his most beloved creations rather than challenging himself) than someone who once made an arthouse film with Stanley Kubrick AND played a cult-of-personality narcissist for Paul Thomas Anderson in the same year.

(Spoilers Ahead) Still, though, in my opinion Cruise's best performance was John Anderton in Minority Report, so when he's at the top of his game in an action-adventure film, he is hard to best in that genre, and there are moments in Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol where he succeeds on that front.  The plots of the Mission Impossible movies were always unnecessary and needlessly confusing (there's nuclear codes in the wrong hands that might lead to nuclear war...which admittedly feels a bit too real right now, so this was a strange choice for my weekend), but the real star has been the insanity of Cruise's action set pieces and the fantastically choreographed ways he fights off the bad guys.

That comes to a head in one of the most psychotic scenes I think I've ever witnessed in a movie.  I have a sincere fear of heights, particularly high, open spaces (I remember the first time I went to the top of the Empire State Building I snuck out, got my picture, and then was very ready to go back down to the earth...it's really a miracle I don't get freaked out by flying to a major degree or else I'd never get to travel).  Cruise, of course, famously does his own stunts and in a jaw-dropping sequence cascades down Burj Khalifa, the tallest building on the planet.  It's a staggering achievement, made all the more surreal by the photos that were released during press showing that he was, in fact, doing these stunts and not just enjoying the safer, but less impressive, world of CGI.  I can only imagine what it must have been like for Brad Bird to tell Cruise, after literally running down several stories outside of a building in a matter of seconds a mile above the ground, "yeah, umm, Tom, we're going to need another take."

This scene is frightening and thrilling, and pretty much worth the price of admission.  The rest of the movie isn't remotely equal to it, as Cruise doesn't bring much in terms of acting or his signature charm here and Pegg/Renner/Patton seem to be on auto-pilot, nothing particularly fascinating in what they're creating for the picture.  The movie also suffers from that skyscraper action set piece being truly jaw-dropping to the point where nothing else can remotely compare and feels like a letdown, particularly a fight in a parking ramp that should have been more interesting than it was.  Bird's a fine director, but that scene was shot in WAY too many closeups when we should have gotten the cool juxtaposition of a mountain of sports cars playing background for an intense fight with a major movie star.  Still, though, I'm giving this three stars as that ten minute sequence in the center of the film is what makes movies so special-name me a television show (or hell, name me another actor) that could do what Ghost Protocol/Cruise did in that scene.

Those are my thoughts-I know I'm late to the party here, but if you have any favorite moments to share from the fourth installment in the Mission Impossible series, put them below?  Anyone else wishing that Cruise would maybe stretch his considerable acting talents a bit more, or are we all fine with him continuing to defy the lies of nature for as long as his seemingly ageless face/body allow?  And how much money would you need to scale the world's largest building?  Share in the comments!