If you're going to see Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol, watch it on real -deal IMAX, not that fake digital foolishness. The film excels at baroque and imaginative action setpieces, many of which use full 70mm photography; that makes all the difference in the world when star Tom Cruise is indulging an apparent death wish on the side of Dubai's Burj Khalifa — an aerial stunt spectacular that in IMAX triggered such a visceral response I thought I was going to be physically ill.
The age of digital special effects has instilled a sense of blasé anything-can-be-faked complacency in modern moviegoers. Yet even though the Dubai sequence involved extensive post-production work from countless designers and programmers, that sense of safety vanishes in the moment. I was absolutely terrified Cruise was going to fall off the side of the building for real, and we would all be traumatized as the audience who inadvertently saw IMAX snuff. That's how good Pixar director Brad Bird (The Incredibles, Ratatouille) is with these credulity-defying showstoppers, which pit Cruise's unknowable super-agent Ethan Hunt and his team against a mad Swede (original Dragon Tattoo protagonist Michael Nyqvist) with some nuclear naughty on his mind.
Highlights include a down-and-dirty assassination in Budapest, an exquisitely choreographed prison break in Russia, and a dance number/seduction/race against time/Donkey Kong to the Death chase through an automated parking garage that combines Minority Report and beehives. Oh, and there's also a girlfight that would make Russ Meyer proud. The cast is pleasant, the dialogue risible, and Bird knocks it out of the park as a visual and visceral stylist in his live-action debut.
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