Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol
I'm very disappointed in myself that I haven't done a film review here since 29th December, I've been too busy with work and football blogs. That last review was on Mission Impossible 2 and, coincidentally, this one is about Mission Impossible 4, newly released on DVD.
I bought it for £15 today at White Rose Centre in HMV. I was quite excited about it as I'd watched the third earlier this week and that is one of my all time favourite films. Therefore there is going to be quite a lot of comparison between MI3 and MI4 in this Ghost Protocol review.
Overall, I enjoyed the film, it had bits of humour in there and there was certainly a lot of action. What took me by unpleasant surprise was how they portrayed Julia, Ethan Hunt's wife, to be dead throughout the film. However, at the end it's revealed, very much against the viewer's expectation, that she's actually still alive and getting along with Ethan, so that was a very good aspect of the film, a pleasant twist.
My main beef with it however, was how Tom Cruise's character, Ethan Hunt, was much less charismatic, vocal, happy and admirable than he was in the third film. In the third his personality is much more smiley, jolly and 'cool' is probably the best way to describe it, the typical 'hero' character in a film. Whereas in Ghost Protocol, he's quite quiet, moody and down. I find it really odd how his personality changes so much from film to film because you're sat there watching it thinking 'is this the same character from the last film?' because it's unrecognisable at times.
I suppose he's supposed to be acting as if Julia's dead, but did they really need that storyline in the film? It doesn't seem worth it, I think we as the audience would rather have had a more admirable, cool hero rather than a sulky, quiet one that seems to have much less personality to him. It means we can't warm or relate to the character as much, which we need to be able to as an audience. It really got to me during the film and makes it a little disappointing for me.
On the other hand, it's hard to live up to the standards and expectations of the third film but still, they could have made Ethan more like he was in the that film and perhaps involved a couple more of the characters more significantly from the third film, such as Julia and Luther (maybe even Brassel- Laurence Fishbourne).
However, overall it was an enjoyable film and was probably on a par with the second one, being a 7 out of 10. If I'd have watched that film not connecting it to any prequels, I'd have probably seen the positives more clearer than the negatives so it was good, just not as good as the third one. Perhaps the change of director had a negative influence on the film to an extent as maybe he would have brightened up Ethan more.
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