Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol: Critic Reviews

A nonsensical, dazzling jumble of wild action scenes and formulaic characters.

Powered by Cruise's moxie, Mission: Impossible -- Ghost Protocol proves that in a Hollywood action-ride culture drenched in fake adrenaline, it's cathartic to encounter the real thing.

Gets back to action basics with globe-trotting, nifty gadgets, high-flying stunts and less loquacious villainy.

Solid entertainment.

Even those allergic to Cruise would struggle to resist his magnetism grinning one-handed from the highest skyscraper in the world, cool as a cucumber, ripped as celery.

Mission:Impossible - Ghost Protocol is easily the best of the lot.

Possesses the requisite number of expertly choreographed how'd-they-do-that scenes, as well as some terrific supporting performances from "Mission: Impossible" veterans and newcomers.

In its way, the movie has old-Hollywood elegance. The scope and sets are vast, tall, and cavernous, but Bird scales down for spatial intimacy.

If 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.

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.

It'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.

The literal and figurative high point of Mission: Impossible -- Ghost Protocol comes at about the halfway point, in and around the tallest building in the world in Dubai.

...it's pretty much state-of-the-art.

"Mission: Impossible -- Ghost Protocol" is a terrific thriller with action sequences that function as a kind of action poetry.

Manages to be a pretty good time for much of its overgenerous 132 minutes.

As usual with the series, the movie combines a plot line a toddler could understand with gadgets that would baffle an engineering Ph.D.

Though not quite as front-to-finish satisfying as J.J. Abrams' Mission: Impossible III, Bird's installment nonetheless rocks.

[Bird's] fresh touch gives breathless energy, tremendous excitement and, above all, humor to what could have been a wearying genre exercise.

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol is top-notch popcorn entertainment, chock-full of dazzling stunts and heroic moments, played out at a near-hysterical pitch.

Bird is an interesting choice for the franchise and, as it turns out, a pretty inspired one.

It's a movie of dazzling individual parts that don't come together to fully satisfying effect in the final stretch.

A largely successful attempt to reboot the moribund franchise that turns out to be probably the most entertaining installment since Brian De Palma's series opener from 15 years ago.

The real mission is to renew a stale franchise, and here Ghost Protocol largely succeeds, on the strength of good action scenes - including an IMAX-enhanced Dubai skyscraper dangle by Cruise - and the good humour of a well-chosen cast.

Just as newly gritty heroes seem to have run their course (fingers crossed), Cruise and Bird are doing their damnedest to maintain the escapist thrills that we as audiences will always choose to accept.

[A] big, shiny, ever-moving toy of a movie.