Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol

(M) ★★★

Director: Brad Bird.

Cast: Tom Cruise, Jeremy Renner, Paula Patton, Simon Pegg, Michael Nyqvist.

"Yeah, you missed a spot. There's a smudge... just a little lower."

FOUR films into this franchise based on the old TV show and Mission: Impossible is starting to look like a poor man's James Bond series.

Not that the fourth entry is bad at all - it's actually pretty entertaining - but a certain genericness is creeping in. There's the gadgets, the save-the-world plot, the supervillian, the insane stunts, the cool car... all that's missing is the girls and a hero with an actual personality or some amount of charm or charisma and you've a 007 outing.

Instead, we've got Tom Cruise delivering a serviceable yet increasingly robotic performance as Ethan Hunt, America's awesomest spy when it comes to completing missions of an impossible nature.

This time it's finding out who bombed the Kremlin and why, with the added ingredient being that Hunt and his team are being blamed by the Russians for the attack, sparking a Cold War-ish scenario.

This takes Hunt and co (Pegg, Patton and Renner) to Dubai and Mumbai as they try to clear their names and save the world from nuclear war.

Brad Bird makes the transition from directing animated films (Ratatouille, The Incredibles, The Iron Giant) to action movies beautifully, particularly in Hunt's heart-stopping and head-spinning crawl up the outside of the world's tallest building. Other sequences, such as the opening prison break, a foot-and-car chase through a sandstorm, and the final showdown in a parking lot, are also riveting.

While Hunt is a more realistic spy than the boozing, womanising Bond has ever been, he's a bit too cold and emotionless to be entertaining, hence we have Pegg on hand for comic relief and the excellent Renner, who plays an analyst with a dark past, which makes for a much more intriguing character.

Overall, M:I 4 is good without being great. It's certainly on a par with number three, and the Burj Khalifa stunt is up there with the first film's iconic "hanging from the ceiling break-in", but the lengthy running time (150 minutes) and the aforementioned genericness prevent it from being a total success.