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100Ghost Protocol brims with scenes that are exciting and amazing at the same time; they're brought off with such casual aplomb that they're funny, too.
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100The most exciting action flick of the year, by a huge margin.
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91A very good thrill ride and Cruise is better than he's been in a long time.
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91As Cruise clings to the side of the building using malfunctioning equipment, and a sandstorm looms in the distance, the question shifts from whether Bird can direct an action film to whether there's anyone out there who can top him.
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88It's implausible as hell, but no less fun for that.
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88Oscar-winning animator Brad Bird seems to have accomplished the impossible with the fourth Mission: Impossible installment by injecting the 15-year-old series with newfound, breathtaking energy.
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88A terrific thriller with action sequences that function as a kind of action poetry.
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88The wait for a great action movie is finally over. Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol is pure popcorn of the highest, most flavorful order, and it's good for you, too.
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80Should you see Mission: Impossible-Ghost Protocol? By all means, and in the big, big, biggest theater you can find.
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80Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol is big, it's loud and so relentless in its action that it reminds me of an old joke. Why do you hit yourself in the head with a hammer? Because it feels so good when you stop. In this case, the headache is worth it.
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Dec 7, 201180Mission: Impossible 4 is so well-made and smooth you may need to see it more than once to truly appreciate its brains and nerves and blood.
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75The world-class mechanic is Brad Bird, who applies the pacing and spatial freedom of a 'toon to a live-action thriller.
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75The film also wastes the coiled intensity of Jeremy Renner, as the newest member of the IMF team with a none-too-compelling past. Bird does keep audiences guessing whether Renner is the only leading actor in Hollywood who's even shorter than Cruise.
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75Ghost Protocol is big and brassy, doing many of the things its predecessors did but, in the words of Nigel Tufnel, turning them up to "11."
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75This film exists purely to dazzle and thrill, and by that measure, it delivers expertly, never lagging despite a lengthy 133-minute running time.
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75If you widen your eyes and turn off your brain, it all adds up to cracking good fun.
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75Has a certain cartoonish vibe. That's OK, because Brad Bird's brand of toonage (The Iron Giant, The Incredibles, Ratatouille) owes much to the rigors and traditions of live action, not only in the way he references other films, but also in his visual approach - sweeping, swooping camera pans, wide vistas, jolting perspective.
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75Bird also really punches up the ensemble playing. I imagine one of the upsides of being the director of nonhuman beings is that you're trained to respond to characters as much as stars.
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70The movie is wonderful, nonsensical fun.
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Dec 27, 201170The movie is sheer hurtling mechanism - the entire world in motion - and it's great silly fun. [2 Jan. 2012, p.79]
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70If the M:I films are immune to the tarnish on the Cruise brand, it's precisely because their spectacle requires us to be impressed by Ethan Hunt, not to like him.
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70As usual with the series, the movie combines a plot line a toddler could understand with gadgets that would baffle an engineering Ph.D.
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70Gets back to action basics with globe-trotting, nifty gadgets, high-flying stunts and less loquacious villainy.
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70Bird has done a stylish and involving job here, turning in an entertaining production that's got considerable visual flair, especially in its action-heavy Imax sections.
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70It's not the generic plot that's so memorable, even though its convolutions are clever enough, or the cast of mostly interesting characters, but the surreal swirl of form and color that frequently fills the enormous screen.
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Dec 15, 201170A well-heeled French assassin chick who murders in exchange for diamonds? So '90s-era rejected Bond script, guys.
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70The impact of spectacular action on striking international locales is moderated somewhat by the repetitive nature of the challenges faced by this rebooted team of American agents.
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70Pixar wizard Brad Bird's live-action debut serves up sights and setpieces of often jaw-dropping ingenuity and visual flair, but it's a movie of dazzling individual parts that don't come together to fully satisfying effect in the final stretch.
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67Left me with the feeling I've seen much of this before. It's not that I'd like something better, it's just that I'd like something new.
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63The movie rolls on, with more clever but increasingly repetitive action sequences that entertain, but drain the film of any credible sense of jeopardy.
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63There's a place in the movies for wish fulfillment, no doubt, including the wish for it all to be over.
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63Bird has serious promise outside the animation realm; in "Ghost Protocol" he errs, I think, by shoving the camera too close to the bodies in the frame, so that the momentum and spatial relationships become awfully hard to parse.
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60Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol is no "Fast Five."
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Dec 16, 201160Still not an essential series like Bourne or Bond, but this entry has a refreshingly light touch and some of the best action of 2011. See it at an IMAX for optimal vertigo-inducing effect.
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60The only thing that's missing, in fact, is a soul. On the other hand, there's a good chance you'll get so caught up in what they're doing, you won't even notice how stiff and inhuman the actors appear.
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60Well, Ghost Protocol ultimately ends up as an eye-rollingly towering totem to L. Ron's favorite son, complete with treacly music cues and longing glances - bromantic and otherwise - that will send you screaming into the thetan-stealing clutches of Lord Xenu.
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58The strategy deserves to self-destruct in five seconds.
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50The Mission: Impossible franchise seems almost crudely mercenary in its formula for success.