Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol IMAX Review: Action and Hot Air

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol IMAX Review: Action and Hot AirThe potential for action movies today is prime, yet Brad Bird’s first live-action feature and fourth overall installment in this secret spy saga provides only enough incredible action scenes without anything of substance to be entertaining, but not memorable.

For example, Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol takes you 130-stories upward over the city of Dubai, hanging onto the outside window with one working super-glove and nothing but air beneath you. And it is awesome. But beneath the action, the acting, dialogue, and story are nothing but hot air, too.


Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise, iconically) is broken out of a Russian prison only to dive into a world of treason, assassination and global destruction. Buddied up with a hodgepodge team of vengeance, guilt, and humor (Paula Patton, Jeremy Renner, and Simon Pegg, respectively); they takes us around the world in awesome cars, breaking into the Kremlin, and breaking a lot of people’s arms on the way.

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol IMAX Review: Action and Hot Air

Their mission is very impossible which keeps the momentum flowing nicely. Even in moments of over-sentimentality, I felt spared of anything too drawn out. So when Cruise and company did try to illustrate serious character development, I just wasn’t buying it.

Regardless, Ghost Protocol is a giant spectacle to keep you on the edge of your seat for two hours. Nearly every scene presents a new high-tech gadget to help the team fight their way out of each sticky predicament. The violence is always kept tame though – director Brad Bird’s Pixar roots allowing such an action movie to still be kid friendly. Perhaps, in the end, that is why I could not be totally swept away by the movie. It seemed too clean.

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol IMAX Review: Action and Hot Air

Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol wraps up leaving the obvious potential for a fifth installment. Whether that’s good or bad, I can’t decide. I can usually forgive when movies veer ridiculous, but somehow I felt cheated by Ghost Protocol, like even they knew it could have been better. But in the end, when you have a bucket of popcorn and the movie is in IMAX, does it really matter?

– Perry Allen

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