Mission Impossible: The Ghost Protocol

Rating: **1/2

A Russian prison is broken into,the Kremlin blown up and Burj Khalifa,the world’s tallest building,stunningly trifled with. But guess where Mission Impossible: The Ghost Protocol ends up calling it a day? A bobbing boat on Seattle via an “automated car parking” in Mumbai.

Tom Cruise’s latest Mission Impossible paces itself disappointingly wrong,despite the star putting his heart and sole into the film’s chases — including the famous Agent Ethan Hunt run,chest thrust out,hands fisted,legs rising horizontal to the waist,arms vertical at the elbow,face scrunched in concentration.

It begins with the prison,where Hunt fights through jail bullies and officials to make good his escape through a tunnel,helped by Agent Jane Carter (Patton) and Agent Benji Dunn (Pegg). His first stop is this old phone booth in a non-descript part of Moscow which splits in the middle to reveal an electronic panel that gives the three of them an operation: to break into the Kremlin and get information on a nuclear scientist gone rogue whom they only know as Cobalt. They have four hours.

Even as you are still revelling at the ingeniousness of the American expertise with an old phone booth,Agents Hunt and Dunn pull off a simple but nifty and unique trick to steal those documents from under Kremlin’s officials’ noses. However,Cobalt has landed up before them and they escape just before he blows up the Russian seat of power.

You are by now sinking down comfortably into your seats,ready to enjoy a film series that has worked out its mix of chutzpah,special effects and stunts.

Brad Bird (The Incredibles,Ratatouille) doesn’t disappoint,taking us all the way to Burj Dubai where Cobalt will be buying some nuclear codes to get one step closer to annihilation. The plan is to switch places with the sellers in one room and buyers in the other to intercept those codes. The real action,however,involves Hunt climbing up the sheer glass wall of the building using stick-on gloves,tampering with the building’s security network and scampering down. It’s a really tall building,and with a sandstorm rushing in,you know there will be a scene of Hunt swinging across the building on nothing but a rope. And boy,does he swing!

The sandstorm that follows is the next high point of Mission Impossible,giving its car chase and street chase a distinctly different perspective.

From then on though it’s all downhill. A nuclear threat from a rogue Russian scientist certainly isn’t the hottest new ticket in town,Patton not the stirring beauty you can hang a few hearts on,Renner (who plays another agent) not the best of grumpy sidekicks with a dark secret that isn’t really that dark or a secret,Dunn not the funniest or quirkiest of guys to be given so much of speaking time,and Nyqvist not as mad a villain as the film believes he is.

Anil Kapoor is a billionaire who lives in a mansion in Mumbai and throws parties where dancers in kathak costumes put up a performance,who has an array of cellphones delivered to him by a help on a tray,and who keeps a satellite as a toy. From somewhere under that mansion he controls that satellite through a giant server which can be reached through a 40-ft drop. And in a house swarming with help,no one guiding that entrance.

However,in a film that plays it straight,narrow and gradually slow,it’s not hard to see that the “playboy Brij Nath” part is just for the India connection. An India that is rich,happening,and partying.

It all boils down to Cruise then. Almost 50,the guy sure can run,swing,jump,even take his shirt off,flick that hair,crinkle those eyes,and be the first guy (“I did it myself,” he says) to run down the Burj. Some would call that mission accomplished.

shalini.langer@expressindia.com