As special effects become ever more computer-dependent, and as digital animation becomes increasingly photo-realistic, it was only a matter of time before a studio embraced the notion that the effects-heavy action flick is really just animation that exists in the real world.
To that end, the producers of Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol hired Brad Bird — the Pixar director responsible for Ratatouille and The Incredibles — to take on the fourth installment in the series; it’s his first attempt at making movies with people rather than pixels, and it’s a gamble that pays off in one of the most expertly constructed and choreographed pure action films in recent memory.
Bird is a director used to making movies without the pesky limitations of physics (and other minor annoyances) getting in the way. In animation, both his “camera” and his characters can move wherever and however he chooses. That’s the philosophy that he brings, as much as it’s possible, to MI4, and he announces it early, in a brilliantly coordinated sequence in which two operatives of the Impossible Mission Force — Agents Carter (Paula Patton) and Dunn (Simon Pegg, returning from MI3) — break team leader Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) out of a Russian prison. It’s a statement of purpose for the entire film: smoothly shot, gracefully orchestrated, laced with an undercurrent of sly humor.
The director’s visual command is so expert that it doesn’t even make a difference that the plot is a warmed up leftover from the back of the mid-’80s fridge: Hunt and his team must avert nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia. The threat originates with one man, Kurt Hendricks (Michael Nyqvist), a mad and unfortunately one-note evil genius who gets his hands on Russian launch codes and the means to use them. Hendricks is only trying to help nudge the process of natural selection: He believes a catastrophic nuclear event would result in a more highly evolved humanity. Once the fallout settles and the world becomes habitable again, presumably.
The story doesn’t rely entirely on Cold War castoffs, though, as screenwriters Andre Nemec and Josh Appelbaum also fold in references to — and digs at — current U.S. anti-terrorism policy. An arms dealer articulates it quite plainly to Hunt midway through the film: “To your government, a potential terrorist is a terrorist.”