Your Mission Is To Watch This Trailer

Say what you want about Tom Cruise, as I often do, but he truly is an action star.  Cruise is among a dying breed of physical actors who do their own stuntwork, like Burt Lancaster, Steve McQueen, Burt Reynolds, Harrison Ford, Jet Li, Angelina Jolie, Tony Ja, Jason Stratham, and of course the insane, Jackie Chan.  Many actors who claim to do their own stunts, (or dancing *cough Natalie Portman*cough) actually perform a much smaller percentage then they think they do.  Of course we find out later that their stunt person did most of it, save a few scenes.

That's why Cruise's most recent stunt in Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol (MI:4) is nothing to scoff at.  Cruise has had his ups and downs with publicity, but any man gutsy enough to dangle from a building (Burj Kahlifa in Dubai) 2,700 feet in the air, has my respect.  The actor filmed the sequence in November 2010 and it was well-documented by the media. 

After viewing the preview, let there be no doubt that this is an action film.  Is it a thinking person's action film?  That has yet to be determined.  The Eminem song playing in the background gives me some doubts.  The previous film had the brilliant Phillip Seymour Hoffman as the crafty, yet flippant, bad guy.  This preview makes MI:4 look like a rehash (or homage) of the 1st film, in which the team goes underground to clear their names.  One bright note is the presence of the equally brilliant Tom Wilkinson, but I'm not sure who he's playing.  One sad note is the lack of consistency with the cast.  I would have liked to have seen Maggie Q, Johnathan Rys Meyers, and Ving Rhames again.  The one holdover from MI:3 is Simon Pegg.  I'm sure that Paula Patton and Jeremeny Renner will be wonderful, but the consistency of the cast is the missing piece from the MI film franchise.  The chemistry between the cast on the original television series is what made it great.

Plot:  When a terrorist bomb destroys the Kremlin, the U.S. government initiates a "ghost protocol" and disavows any knowledge of the mission impossible team (also known as the Impossible Mission Force or IMF-- not to be confused with the International Monetary Fund).  Like the first film, Ethan Hunt and crew are blamed for the attack, however, unlike the previous film they are allowed to escape so they can find proof of their innocence.  If any of the team members are caught or compromised they will stand trial as terrorists.  Ethan is forced to work with fellow IMF agent, Brandt, who does not have his team's best interest in mind.  Brandt will be played by Jeremy Renner.