Product Description
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No plan. No backup. No choice. Agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and
his elite team (Jeremy Renner, The Avengers and Simon Pegg, Star
Trek) go underground after a bombing of the Kremlin implicates
the IMF as international terrorists. While trying to clear the
agency's name, the team uncovers a plot to start a nuclear war.
Now, to save the world, they must use every high-tech trick in
the book. The mission has never been more real, more dangerous,
or more impossible.
.com
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The second half of the first decade of the 21st century has been
kind of tough for Tom Cruise. That's tough in a way over and
above the hardship of living the legacy of one of history's top
movie stars--a job more demanding than any mere mortal could
imagine. But after two fruitful collaborations with Steven
Spielberg (Minority Report and War of the Worlds), his stature
took a beating from the one-two hits of those wacky PR gaffes and
that string of relative box-office disappointments (Lions for
Lambs, Valkyrie, Knight and Day), which seemed to start with the
third installment of his Mission: Impossible franchise in 2006.
It's hard to say with a straight face that taking in only $398
million worldwide is a disappointment, but it was a low for the
series, which some later saw as a prelude to his potentially
dimming stardom. But on the cusp of turning 50, it looks like Tom
Cruise has put the licking behind him and entered a new phase of
self-conception with an upcoming array of roles, starting with a
more maturely controlled version of super Ethan Hunt in the
sleek and supercharged Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol. The
things Cruise has done right in M: I part four include toning
down his youthful, arrogant preening and letting his castmates
share more of the spotlight (Jeremy Renner, Paula Patton, and
Simon Pegg all have some terrifically shiny moments). He also
lets the unique creative vision of director Brad Bird shine
through in a first live-action outing for the accled helmer of
Iron Giant, The Incredibles, and Ratatouille. Still looking much
younger than his years (that hair! those pecs! those abs!),
Cruise is playing more age-appropriately, letting a little wisdom
and grace seep into his charisma so the wattage of his mere
presence smolders a little deeper. It's a nice nod to a graying
generation that says you can get older and still be cool. All
that is not to say he doesn't play up his action-star chops to
the max. In a mostly inconsequential narrative arc that has
something to do with purloined nuclear launch codes, an important
metal briefcase, satellite uplinks, and global annihilation that
leaps from Moscow to Dubai to Mumbai, Cruise is as dangerously
nimble as he has ever been. He dangles one-handed from the
tallest building in the world, bounds off ledges, springs out of
speeding vehicles, tumbles and careens up and down the levels of
an automated parking garage, and generally sprints and jumps his
way across the movie with only a scratch or to show for
it. Also on the outlandish upside is a happily stereotypical
villain straight out of Connery-era Bond and as many
bleeding-edge gadgets as the art department techno-geeks could
dream up. A running gag is that many of these electronic fantasy
tools fail at just the wrong moment, which is part of a larger
wink acknowledging how utterly preous yet ingeniously
conceived this behemoth of a movie really is. The gadgetry is not
limited just to the miraculous props. Ghost Protocol employs CGI
fakery of the highest order from the sub-industry of effects
contractors that ratchet up the standard of computing power and
software design, one-upping each successive action-adventure
extravaganza. The loving detail that goes into blowing up the
Kremlin or rendering a photo-realistic sandstorm erupting across
the enhanced skyline of an Oz-like desert city is nothing short
of miraculous. What's more astonishing is that Tom Cruise closes
the deal with a selling power that's as new and improved as the
laminates on his multi-million-dollar teeth. --Ted Fry