MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: GHOST PROTOCOL -- 6

I took a break from watching Bollywood spoofs and My Little Pony episodes on Netflix and decided to watch MISSION IMPOSSIBLE:GHOST PROTOCOL because Simon Pegg. (Is there a better reason?  Anyone?  No?  Right.  Moving on then...) 

I rented this movie from the Redbox rather than going to the theater.  I love Simon Pegg so perhaps my reluctance to support him tells you something about how much I anticipated hating Tom Cruise in this movie.  But, I watched it anyway and Tom Cruise was very Tom Cruise-y, which means he was climbing stuff in capri pants and pink lip gloss when he wasn't running.   If YOU are a fan of watching Tom Cruise run then this movie is right up your alley... aaand right down your street and right through your crowded Mumbai traffic and pretty much anywhere else Tom Cruise could think of to run. 

For 37 long seconds this man did not run... and then he sprinted OUT of a car.

Anyway, the movie was flashy and exotic and everything you expect a James-Bond-wannabe movie to be.  The problem with that is there were lots of good actors in this movie.  Even the Russian arms dealer you saw for exactly two minutes was an interesting character, one I personally would enjoy watching an entire film about.  Unfortunately the writing didn't give any of these lovely people enough time between shots of Tom "Running Man" Cruise to actually DO anything other than be something he bounced off of and then ran away from.  Simon Pegg did the standard bumbly-geek-British act, Paula Patton as "the Girl" was fierce and hot, and Jeremy Renner did the best he could with a totally contrived backstory.  He was lovely.  His lines were not.  Incidentally, if the Mission Impossible series ever were fronted by Jeremy Renner rather than Mr. Cruise, I might actually pay more than $1.50 to see it.  

Don't believe me?  Let's compare:

Which of the following two men looks like the Unabomber?

Man "A"  or

Man "B"

 Right.

The one thing I did really enjoy about this movie was the ambiguity of their roles as heroes and how it reflected current American attitudes.   Our team did a lot of shady stuff and made some really bad decisions. They narrowly averted a disaster of their own making through sheer luck and because Simon Pegg shot someone in the back.  Powerful, fustrated, isolated, the Mission Impossible team never took the time to plan or prepare.  Instead there was just a lot of running from crisis to crisis (and by running I mean literal running, courtesy of Mr Cruise.)