Impossible what? | Bangkok Post: Arts & Culture

MOVIE REVIEW

Brad Bird directed The Incredibles _ that richly animated movie about a family of superheroes _ so the latest Impossible, with 50-year-old Tom Cruise playing superman in disguise, seems a natural step further. The missions this time take place in four cities: Budapest, where the camera swoops over its solemn grandeur; Moscow, where the Kremlin is sinisterly bombed to bits; Dubai, where the world's tallest building gives you a thrilling case of perpetual, Imax-induced vertigo; and Mumbai, colourful with Orientalist cliches. To go by that quartet of geography, Mission: Impossible _ Ghost Protocol is hugely entertaining in the first three locations, before flunking into an insipid setpiece in what should've been spicy India. But three out of four override that quibble; the Dubai gig alone is probably one of the year's most pulsating choreographies. Look at the director's name again and you'll get to appreciate that technical argot in full: Bird's eye view.

Tom Cruise in action as Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible —Ghost Protocol.

All four Mission Impossible movies are bombast of sheer impossibility. They wear that on their sleeves like a proud schoolboy. They're not spy films, despite the espionage elements, but muscled, hi-tech, overdone thrillers riding high on post-Cold War fantasy. What has sustained the franchise over the past 15 years is that each successive director has been allowed to bring about the metamorphosis in the film's texture according to their cinematic schooling. Brian de Palma, in 1996, threw in bewitching shadows and went part Euro-art, part film noir. John Woo, in 2000, gave the film bullet-ballet histrionics (remember the white doves?). Then JJ Abrams sculpted a solid boy-toy fantasia and made us forget Tom Cruise's height by making him scaling Malaysia's edifice, then the tallest structure on Earth.