Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023) - Cruise franchise loses steam, altitude

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A familiar array of characters, tense situations and peak stunt moments are teased on this poster for Christopher McQuarrie's Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One

A secret AI super computer is going rogue, sinking a state-of-the-art Russian submarine. Control of 'the entity' is a matter of world domination rights. Two split keys are central to that control, and IMF agent Ethan Hunt and Co. will naturally need to do the impossible and secure both of them...

 

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One is written by Erik Jendresen (Band of Brothers (2001, miniseries)) and co-writer/co-producer/director, New Jerseyite master filmmaker Christopher McQuarrie (The Way of the Gun (2000)), whose 5th feature it is. It is the 7th film in the Mission: Impossible franchise, following its strongest entry, masterpiece Mission: Impossible - Fallout (2018), also by McQuarrie.

After some increasingly thrilling M:I films, the franchise finally loses its grip here in a mammoth epic length first part of a two-parter, predictably committing the familiar sin of going overboard.

Dead Reckoning has exciting action sequences, co-producer/star Tom Cruise's (Valkyrie (2008)) driving off a mountain on a motorbike being its hype centerpiece, but the film's one really memorable action set-piece is the one near the end, set on the Orient Express, whereas entries 4 (Ghost Protocol, 2011), 5 (Rogue Nation, 2015) and especially 6 (Fallout, 2018) all had 2 or more truly memorable action sequences. The new film has a Rome-set car chase with built-in tongue-in-cheek humor that mirrors a big city chase scene from one Pierce Brosnan-led Bond movie (you guess which.) The fiercely antagonistic CIA operatives of the preceding film have turned into amiable more or less bumbling fools in the shape of Shea Whigham (Fancy Dance (2023)) and Greg Tarzan Davis (Top Gun: Maverick's (2022)). The 'entity' AI McGuffin plot devise, a dialog dense and a bit long Venice section that doesn't come with a clear explanation (except for the obvious one that a franchise of this magnitude naturally at some point needs to go to Venice it seems...) and the quaint Orient Express choice for the finale setting (you'll wonder if that train actually still exists, it's so 20th century) - it all reeks of Hunt's bigger brother opponent in the spy franchise business, Mr. 007. And so does the inflated runtime.

Lorne Balfe (Black Adam (2022)) is back scoring the film but the percussive, muscular sound of Fallout is evaporated. SPOILER Rebecca Ferguson's (The Snowman (2017)) Ilsa Faust gets knocked off. Esai Morales (SuperFly (2018)) is the villain, though he looks so much like a handsome male model, it's hard to find him too intimidating. An androgynous Pom Klementieff (Westworld (2020, TV-series)) and flustered Hayley Atwell (Chicken/Egg (2017, short)) are game as fellow new characters. The rubber face changing scenes (by now old hat) and Cruise running scenes are there, but mostly because they have to be, it seems, and not because clever writing make them necessary in the plot. Another issue for the talk-heavy script is that, despite all the 'entity' talk in Dead Reckoning, it is missing a scene that illustrates for us why the AI thing is so powerful and dangerous, ('Russian sub down' doesn't cut it, as they're the enemy, and they're already on a submarine...) It remains a mysterious McGuffin in an overlong first part picture, the first time yet that the long-running M:I franchise doesn't really score. We have to hope that the second part, set for next summer, is a more original and compelling work.

 

Related posts:

 
Mission: Impossible franchise: Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011) - Cruise and Bird's phenomenal action spectacle

Mission: Impossible III (2006) - Cruise steers Abrams' flawed MacGuffin debut 

Mission: Impossible 2 (2000) - Cruise and Woo deliver red-hot action spectacle 
Christopher McQuarrie: Top Gun: Maverick (2022) - Magnificent; a soaring vehicle (co-writer)

Top 10: Best franchise movies

2018 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
2018 in films - according to Film Excess 

Mission: Impossible – Fallout (2018) - McQuarrie and Cruise succeed with another masterly M:I thrill ride 

2015 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED IV] 

2015 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III] 
2015 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2015 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
2015 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess
Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (2015) - Cruise and McQuarrie's mega-movie masterpiece 
Jack Reacher (2012) - Highly entertaining, dark hero-vehicle for Tom Cruise

 

 

Watch a trailer for the film here

 

Cost: 291 mil. $

Box office: 273.8 mil. $ and counting

= Too early to say

[Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One premiered 29 June (Rome) and runs 163 minutes. Shooting began in February 2020 but was shut down due to the China Virus pandemic, and begun again in September 2020, finishing in September 2021, as both Part 1 and Part 2 were shot back-to-back. It took place in Norway, Italy, UAE and England. Corona shutdowns and other problems made the film's costs balloon, becoming the priciest film of Cruise's career. He earns 13 mil. $ from each of the films, and a back end percentage. The film opened #1 to a 54.6 mil. $ first weekend in North America. McQuarrie returns with Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 2 (2024), also set as Cruise's return. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One is certified fresh at 96 % with an 8.00/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One? 

Mission: Impossible III (2006) - Cruise steers Abrams' flawed MacGuffin debut

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Tom Cruise's name, the title in short form and a matchstick getting lid are the few elements on this franchise-reliant poster for J.J. Abrams' Mission: Impossible III

IMF agent Ethan Hunt's wife gets shot in the head, as he winds up in a new debacle, but how did it get to that? Hunt was withdrawn from early retiring and put back into the field to stop an arm's dealer who had kidnapped a colleague ...

Mission: Impossible III is written by Alex Kurtzman (Hawai Five-O (2010-20)), Roberto Orci (Xena: Warrior Princess (2000, TV-series)) and great New-Yorker filmmaker, co-writer/director J.J. Abrams (Alias (2001-05)).
The opening scene is not really suspense-building in the way it should be, and over-all the whoa-moments that the M:I franchise is famous for aren't as strong as they should be in M:I 3. The plot revolves around a MacGuffin, - a hunted-for object that's never really explained, - in this case an object referred to as the 'rabbit foot', and it comes off a bit as a tongue-in-cheek tease; something which Simon Pegg's (Cuban Fury (2014)) not yet fully situated Benji IMF helper character attempts to concretize a bit.
But the action thunders away in handsome, international locations, and Tom Cruise (Minority Report (2002)) leads the film without hesitation, making Mission: Impossible III still a good jolt of entertainment.
SPOILER The worst flaw of the film, though, is its ending, which takes the franchise into a dead-end of blatant sentimentality, as Hunt's wife spills all the secret beans and clowns around with colleagues. Michelle Monaghan (Saint Judy (2018)) is good in the part, but this is the wrong part of the store for a Mission: Impossible film to wind up in.

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2015 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]  
2015 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess
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Star Trek Into Darkness (2013) or, Star Trek It Before You Wreck It
Star Trek (2009) - Abrams' imperfect but awesome reboot
Super 8 (2011) - Abrams' nostalgic family crowdpleaser
Cloverfield (2008) or, It Tore Her Head Off! (co-producer)   

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: 150 mil. $
Box office: 398.4 mil. $
= Box office success (returned 2.65 times its cost)
[Mission: Impossible III premiered 24 April (Rome) and runs 126 minutes. Development of the film was troubled, with directors David Fincher and Joe Carnahan having creative differences that made them leave the film, as well as stars Kenneth Branagh, Scarlett Johansson and Carrie-Anne Moss departing due to delays. Cruise hired Abrams after binge-watching the first two seasons of Alias and took a pay cut to get production going: His gross participation deal of 30 % for Mission: Impossible 2 (2000) was decreased to 22.5 %. This would come to 89.64 mil. $, but his pay is listed on IMDb as 75 mil. $, - in any case still a fortune. Shooting took place in Berlin, Germany, China, including Shanghai, Virginia, Italy, including Rome, the Vatican, California including Los Angeles, and in Washington D.C. from July - November 2005. The film opened #1 to a 47.7 mil. $ first weekend in North America, slightly over the 2000 M:I 2 but less than the first film's 57.8 mil. $ opening. It remained #1 the next weekend and in the top 5 for another 4 weeks, grossing 134 mil. $ (33.6 % of the total gross), significantly less than the two preceding films. The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were Japan with 44.3 mil. $ (11.1 %) and the UK with 29 mil. $ (7.3 %). Roger Ebert gave the film a 2.5/4 star review, in line with this one. Cruise returned as Hunt in Brad Bird's great Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011) and another two sequels, with two more currently in production. Abrams returned with The Office (2007, TV-series) and theatrically with Star Trek (2009). Cruise returned first in Lions for Lambs (2007). Mission: Impossible III is fresh at 71 % with a 6.6/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Mission: Impossible III?

Mission: Impossible 2 (2000) - Cruise and Woo deliver red-hot action spectacle

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Star Tom Cruise entrenched in a sea of fire on the eye-stopping poster for John Woo's Mission: Impossible 2

IMF agent Ethan Hunt gets a new mission: Using a beautiful woman as bait, he is to retrieve a deadly virus from his now rogue ex-colleague. Hunt falls in love with his bait, however, complicating matters.

Mission: Impossible 2 is written by Robert Towne (Cisco Pike (1971)), with Brannon Braga (Salem (2014-16)) and Ronald D. Moore (Battlestar Galactica (2004-09)) contributing story elements, and directed by great Chinese filmmaker John Woo (The Young Dragons/Tie han rou qing (1974)).
It is a spectacular and highly stylized action vehicle built around its towering star Tom Cruise (Eyes Wide Shut (1999)), whose screen power has been matched by few in all the history of cinema. But the whole cast and crew give it their all on what is certainly Woo's best film made in the West.
Ving Rhames' (Piranha 3D (2010)) Luther character is a gift to the franchise; Anthony Hopkins (Slipstream (2007)) is another joy here, and Thandiwe Newton (RocknRolla (2008)) is a beauty as the woman Hunt falls for. Dougray Scott's (Last Passenger (2013)) villain is a bit of a disappointment though, and one misses a name actor in the part to be honest.
Hans Zimmer's (Widows (2008)) score feels like a rehearsal to his later (great) work in The Dark Knight (2008): Somewhat comic kitsch meets solemn, Greek myth-like grandeur - and hard rock.
But M:I 2 is all about visuals, and those provided here an action fan will not want to miss.

Related post:

John Woo: Face/Off (1997) - Travolta and Cage butt heads in Woo's wild, silly action machine

Watch the incredible intro of the film here

Cost: 125 mil. $
Box office: 546.3 mil. $
= Big hit (returned 4.37 times its cost)
[Mission: Impossible 2 premiered 18 May (Los Angeles) and runs 123 minutes. Towne has reported that several action sequences were planned for the film, before its story was set. Shooting took place from April - December 1999 in Australia, including Sydney, Utah, Arizona and in California, including Los Angeles. Cruise refused to change his introduction scene of him free-climbing in Utah's Moab, which was done only with a harness and no safety net. In a jump in the scene, he tore his shoulder. Newton has many years later recalled Cruise's perfectionism on-set as a "nightmare". Hopkins was paid 5 mil. $ for his part; Cruise made incredible 75 mil. $ on the film through gross participation salary. The film opened #1 to a 57.8 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it retained the #1 spot for another 2 weekends and spent a subsequent 2 weekends in the top 5 (#2-#4), grossing 215.4 mil. $ (39.4 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were Japan with 94.1 mil. $ (17.2 %) and the UK with 26.3 mil. $ (4.8 %). It was the highest-grossing film worldwide of 2000 and the highest-grossing in the M:I franchise until Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011), the 4th entry. The M:I franchise with Cruise at the helm has spawned 4 films since M:I 2, with 2 more production. Roger Ebert gave it a 3/4 star review, translating to a notch harder than this one. Woo returned with Windtalkers (2002). Cruise returned in Vanilla Sky (2001). Mission: Impossible 2 is rotten at 57 % with a 5.96/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Mission: Impossible 2?

Mission: Impossible – Fallout (2018) - McQuarrie and Cruise succeed with another masterly M:I thrill ride

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+ Best Action Movie of the Year + Best Fight Scene of the Year: Bathroom fight scene + Best Car Chase of the Year: Paris chase + Best Big Hit Movie of the Year

A slick poster for Christopher McQuarrie's Mission: Impossible – Fallout, which seems to have all the right elements

Ethan Hunt and the IMF team are overseen by a very critical CIA big sister, as a captured nuclear expert has helped some bad people develop 3 plutonium bombs that need to be secured as soon as possible.

Mission: Impossible – Fallout is the 6th movie in the M:I franchise, written and directed as the 4th film by New Jerseyite master filmmaker Christopher McQuarrie (The Way of the Gun (2000)), following the series' first masterpiece, which McQuarrie also directed, Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (2015). Fallout arguably tops that film.
Tom Cruise (Rain Man (1988)) returns, still a movie star in a league of his own, although his days of leading major action movies may be numbered, - but only because age creeps up on even the best. Not that it hinders his powerhouse performance here. Fallout also brings back Rebecca Ferguson (The Greatest Showman (2017)), who handles drama and bad-ass fight scenes with equal adeptness; Simon Pegg (Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011)), who has become an integral chummy member of the IMF team by now; Alec Baldwin (Blue Jasmine (2013)), SPOILER who has a moving death scene; Sean Harris (Trespass Against Us (2016)) as a returning lunatic villain; Michelle Monaghan (Perfume (2001)) as Hunt's detached soulmate; and Ving Rhames (Surrogates (2009)), still a big lump of lovely as Luther. Fresh star faces include Vanessa Kirby (Wasteland (2012)), who is sexy while exuding intelligence as the White Widow, Angela Bassett (This Means War (2012)) as CIA boss Erika, and finally Henry Cavill (I Capture the Castle (2003)) as the film's second, punchy heavy, Walker.
Cavill's beefcake macho radiation is a great fit for the movie, SPOILER and Cruise's taking on Superman himself is perhaps the greatest scoop for Fallout. A bathroom fight scene featuring the two of them, trying to secure a third, very violent male, may well be the year's coolest fight scene.
Fallout supplies the insane action sequences we are expecting from an M:I movie, - my favorite contemporary franchise by far, - with heart-pumping car and motor bike chase scenes in Paris a showstopper, just as the finale's helicopter battle and its aftermath is truly spectacular. The wide lens photography (by cinematographer Rob Hardy (Ex Machina (2015)) in this portion, - and an incredible parachuting scene earlier on, - is astounding, fabulously good-looking.
The plot also has the clever ideas, espionage twists and double plays that make us pay attention throughout, from the fantastic twist beginning (with CNN's Wolf Blitzer) onwards.
Mission: Impossible – Fallout is a larger-than-life terrific action thrill-ride with top-notch sound work and a pounding, truly glorious score by Lorne Balfe (13 Hours (2016)). It is the year's best explosive mass offering in cinemas, and I need to see it again up against the preceding Rogue Nation, - they both outrank just about any other action tentpole put out there in the 00's and 10's.

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2018 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
2018 in films - according to Film Excess
2015 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2015 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
2015 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess
Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (2015) - Cruise and McQuarrie's mega-movie masterpiece 
Jack Reacher (2012) - Highly entertaining, dark hero-vehicle for Tom Cruise (also with Cruise) 
Mission: Impossible franchise: Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011) - Cruise and Bird's phenomenal action spectacle

Watch a video from the movie's Paris premiere here

Cost: 178 mil. $
Box office: 372 mil. $ and counting
= Too early to say
[Mission: Impossible – Fallout premiered 12 July (Paris, France) and runs 147 minutes. Production was delayed due to a salary issue between Paramount and Cruise, who would only take the same or a higher salary that Universal paid him for The Mummy (2017), (which was 13 mil. $ + an unknown gross percentage. This got resolved, and shooting took place from April 2017 - March 2018 in England, including London, Paris, France, India, New Zealand, United Arab Emirates and Norway. The long shoot is explained by the fact that Cruise injured his leg in London, halting production for 7 weeks, costing a reported 80 mil. $, which was paid for through insurance and so didn't affect the overall costs. Cavill's reshoots for Justice League (2017) conflicted with Fallout's production, and his mustache as Walker became problematic: McQuarrie initially offered to remove it in exchange for 3 mil. $, which they claimed it would cost to add it in post, but Paramount retracted the offer, and Warner Bros. instead had to cut out the mustache from Justice League's Superman digitally. The film opened #1 to a 61.2 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it stayed atop for another week and is now poised to be beaten from the spot by The Meg. It was the best M:I opening domestically yet and the 2nd biggest of Cruise's career. Overseas, it has been especially successful so far in South Korea with a giant 43.5 mil. $ gross, and the film has yet to open in 4 markets, of which the last is pivotal: Lithuania (17 Aug.), Italy (29 Aug.), Greece (30 Aug.) and China (31 Aug.). The film must aim at beating its predecessor's 682.7 mil. $ - at least. An estimated 140 mil. $ are being spent on global marketing of it. It has raced into the #157 slot of IMDb's user-generated Top 250, sitting between Trainspotting (1996) and No Country for Old Men (2007). McQuarrie's next job as director has not been announced yet. Cruise returns in the much awaited Top Gun: Maverick (2019). Mission: Impossible – Fallout is certified fresh at 97 % with an 8.3/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Mission: Impossible – Fallout?

Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (2015) - Spectacular stunts in twisty actioner

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+ Best Action Movie of the Year

The stars of Christopher McQuarrie's Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation light up this cool poster

Tom Cruise (Born on the Fourth of July (1989)) is back for the 5h chapter in the Mission: Impossible franchise, this time written and directed by New Jerseyite master filmmaker Christopher McQuarrie (Jack Reacher (2012)) with story by Drew Pearce (Iron Man 3 (2013)).

Following dramatic events in recent cases, the US government decides to shut down the IMF, just as Ethan Hunt & Co. are getting near to a rogue pan-national terror organization of former agents, known as The Syndicate.

After Brad Bird's excellent 4th film in the M:I franchise, Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011), which competed with John Woo's Mission: Impossible II (2000) in being the best in the series, I went to the new film with some trepidation. - Could it live up to the preceding film?
Rogue Nation's opening scene is perhaps the film's greatest and a perfect hook: On a dull, flat field in Belarus, a high-tension situation surrounding a shipment of missiles on a plane taking off arises. As many will know, who have read snippets of M:I 5 related stories this past year, the situation ends up with Cruise hanging on the outside of the Airbus A400M Atlas as it takes off. The fact that we know that Cruise actually did this, suspended on the plane up to 5,000 feet in the air, makes the perfectly edited scene a giant thrill. He is our substitute in the movie; we are Cruise, and we can, thank goodness, 'perform' his feats with him on a safe distance from our theater seats. Thank God for Tom Cruise! - The royal opening naturally gets paired with Lalo Schifrin's classic, great theme, which composer Joe Kraemer (The Way of the Gun (2000)) weaves into his own suspenseful score at pivotal points in the film.
Rogue Nation continues as a strong action spy movie with phenomenal segments in and around the opera in Vienna, (Cruise and Rebecca Ferguson (Hercules (2014)) also did their own jump stunt from the roof of the building there); in Morocco, where Cruise's much publicized 6 minute dive scene, which he reportedly did for real without edits, plays out, (though it luckily doesn't last 6 minutes), followed by one of the most exciting chase scenes in years (also with Cruise doing much of his own driving); and later in London. All the spectacular sequences are infused with several state-of-the-art gadgets and beautiful photography by the great Robert Elswit (There Will Be Blood (2007)).

Rebecca Ferguson and Tom Cruise dish out some serious ass-whooping, (and take some themselves as well) in Christopher McQuarrie's masterful Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation

Skeptics have frowned, because Cruise isn't 25 anymore, (he recently turned 53), and because this is # 5 in a franchise. Also, - up to you which of the above mentioned stunt escapades you choose to believe. Even Cruise obviously can't do this forever. (I just hope he doesn't kill himself doing one of these films one day. (The most dangerous thing that happened during filming of Rogue Nation seems to have been that he was nearly hit by a double-decker bus in London.)) But the fact is that he just did it again, and probably better than he ever has before in a major action movie. A giant spy action movie of today simply doesn't get any better than this.
Cruise leads a film like no-one else around, and this one just plays on all levels:
Behind him is an exciting cast: Simon Pegg (Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)) has a bigger part now and lends his humanity and a first-rate performance to the film. Jeremy Renner (12 and Holding (2005)) continues as a more skeptical part of Hunt's team, and Ving Rhames (Mission: Impossible (1996)) is fun to have back after being gone in the previous film. Cool, strong and very sexy Swede Ferguson has a juicy part as a capable woman walking a thin line; Tom Hollander (Gosford Park (2001)) is great as the British PM; Alec Baldwin (Aloha (2015)) ditto as tight-assed, but apparently not very dangerous, CIA director, Jens Hultén (Skyfall (2012)) is another punchy Swede; and other heavies are icy Brits Sean Harris (Deliver Us from Evil (2014)), who looks and sounds like a nasty child molester as the great, main villain here, and Simon McBurney (The Theory of Everything (2014)) as the deceitful MI6 director.
Crucially, the story is smart, it keeps moving with twists and turns along the way, and is even bumped by subtle references to such diverse elements as the Faust legend, SS Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS (1975)), the Turandot opera, Casablanca (1942) and the missing Malaysian Airlines MH370 airplane.
A few years later and Rogue Nation has aged a bit, not least because one holds it up against Cruise/McQuarrie's even better follow-up, Mission: Impossible - Fallout (2018), and Cruise's complete triumph in Top Gun: Maverick (2022).

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2015 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
Jack Reacher (2012) - Highly entertaining, dark hero-vehicle for Tom Cruise (with Cruise) 
Mission: Impossible franchise: Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011) - Cruise and Bird's phenomenal action spectacle

Hang on, it's Christopher McQuarrie's Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation!

Watch the trailer for the film here - this is what cinemas are there for, so go see this movie in a CI-NE-MA!

Cost.: 150 mil. $
Box office: Just opened, - not public yet
= Uncertainty
[But if there's any justice in the world, M:I 5 is gonna exceed expectations and make a giant megabuck. A recent, detrimental Scientology documentary is feared to have some sway with American audiences set against Cruise, but Film Excess doubts that this could really have serious impact on the 'Cruise control', which will settle across global box office this weekend. The film will not open in China, a key market, until September 8th. If possible, go see it in IMAX, in which the film is even more amazing.]

What do you think of Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation?

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011) - Cruise and Bird's phenomenal action spectacle

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1 Time Film Excess Award Winner:

Best Digital Effects

3 Time Film Excess Nominee:

Best Sound (lost to Drive)
Best Practical Effects (lost to Haywire) 
Best Digital Effects (won)

+ Best Action Movie of the Year
+ Best Blockbuster of the Year

Tom Cruise on the world's tallest building, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, for Brad Bird's Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol

Ethan Hunt gets helped out of a Russian prison to infiltrate the Kremlin, which, nevertheless, gets blown up and robbed of its nuclear weapons' codes. Fired by the US government, Hunt and three colleagues will now have to save world peace!

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol is the 4th entry in the Tom Cruise-starring (War of the Worlds (2005)) franchise that is based on the Mission: Impossible (1966-73) TV-series, created by Bruce Geller (Have Gun - Will Travel (1958-63)).
The action sequences, in Dubai and in India in particular, are spectacular: Cruise, as usual, actually did most of his own stunts, including crawling on the Burj Khalifa (with safety wires that were erased digitally.) Fellow ass-kicker Paula Patton (Deja Vu (2006)) and Léa Seydoux (The Lobster (2015)) also did their own stunts in their intense fight scene. 
The new gadgets introduced are fresh and fun, and Cruise, who is in absolute top shape, and the rest of the cast are outstanding: Simon Pegg (Absolutely Anything (2015)) is funny; Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker (2008)) acts well, and Michael Nyqvist (John Wick (2014)) is frightening as a Breivik-reminiscent lunatic villain.
Brad Bird (Tomorrowland: A World Beyond (2015)) has directed M:I 4 as his first live-action movie after heading The Iron Giant (1999), The Incredibles (2004)) and Ratatouille (2007), and it is undeniably an impressive debut for him.
Josh Appelbaum and André Nemec (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014), both) have co-written the script, and the plot simply sticks.
M:I 4 is a brilliant spy action movie, and perhaps the franchise's best, (a position that is only challenged by John Woo's great Mission: Impossible II (2000)).

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2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
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The Incredibles (2004) - Unwanted animation action slam-dunk

Watch the awesome trailer for the movie here

Cost: 145 mil. $
Box office: 694.7 mil. $
= Big hit
[M:I 4 was a phenomenal success, the highest-grossing film of the franchise and of all Cruise's starring vehicles. It made 209.3 mil. $ (30 % of the total gross) in the US with its most important markets after that being China with a gross of 102.5 mil. $ (15 %) and Japan with a gross of 69.7 mil. $ (10 %). Cruise has thrown himself into new, hair-raising stunts for the inevitable M:I 5, including hanging onto an airplane taking off and staying underwater without oxygen for a reported 6 minutes (!) for an elaborate underwater action scene. It comes out in July/August and is called Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (2015).]

What do you think of Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol?
Rank the M:I movies