Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol

So what do you get when you cross Pixar with Bad Robot? A film about an old man who ties a whole bunch of balloons to an island populated with polar bears? Although that would be totes cool (copyright!), it's not the product of this recent pairing.

Animated giant Brad Bird (The Incredibles) has taken the reigns for this latest installment of the Mission Impossible franchise. Screenwriters and Bad Robot alum Josh Appelbaum and Andre Nemec (Alias) have penned the script based on the TV series by Bruce Gellar. Producer credits go to JJ Abrams, Bryan Burk (All the good things on telly) and Tom Cruise. Bad Robot regular Michael Giacchino adds his familiar and wondrous touch to the score.

Cue theme song... dun dun dun dun dun...

It's straight into the action. We follow a strapping man (Josh Holloway - Lost) as he runs away from bad dudes while shooting guns and looking incredibly strapping. Stuff happens.

Locked in a Russian jail, stone-bouncing enthusiast Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise - those crazy Scientology videos) is about to be set free to the croons of Dean Martin. His jail breakers are the recently-and-conveniently-made-field-agent-slash-computer-geek Benji (Simon Pegg - Paul) and regulation hottie and Zoe-Saldana-look-a-like Jane (Paula Patton - Hitch). For good measure, Ethan also grants freedom to an inmate called Bogdan (Miraj Grbic - As If I Am Not There) who gets a new life under a new name. Aww.

In a nutshell, there's a crazy Russian called Hendricks (Michael Nyqvist - The Girl With The/Who...) who is fond of end-game theory and wants to start nuclear war... for the good of mankind... Team Hunt have to stop him. Simple enough but that extra-crazy U.S President has washed his hands of IMF. They have no back-up, no resources. I bet George W. Bush wouldn't do that. Bloody Democrats.

There's fight scenes a-plenty, cool technology stuff, and the well-shaped calves of Cruise to fill the screen along with regular MI story beats: Hunt climbing things, people being suspended above things, pretty cars, masks.

If you like action films and your secret agents with American accents then you'll enjoy the film. There's lots of cleverly choreographed fights. The around-the-world locations are lovely. I think this film will do more for Dubai than that piece of camel shit Sex and the City 2 ever will.

What ever you say about him, Tom Cruise has still got it, I don't know if that is because he sold his soul to Xenu or what but he's still very lithe! Pegg offers comic relief and Jeremy Renner wears very nice pants. I know that product placement is frowned upon but a few more shots of that very pretty car would have been nice. There's a couple of cameos from films past to keep an eye out for too.

Things I learnt: pretty car was pretty; goggles are cool; even with all the technological breakthroughs we've had in demolitions, people still use fuses to arm bombs and stuff - cue theme song!

Things I didn't learn: what 'Ghost Protocol' means!
Edit: OK, so now I get it - I wasn't paying attention :)

Entertaining.
Seven out of ten.