Tom Cruise may be one weird dude, but he’s a hell of an actor.  I enjoyed the first three Mission Impossible Movies.  The first was a worthy successor to the famed television series, but I didn’t enjoy any of them as much as the fourth installment.  In all honesty, the most memorable thing I recall from the first three movies is that Dougray Scott was injured while making the second one and thus could not play Wolverine in X-Men.  (And thank god for that.  It’s hard to imagine anyone other than Hugh Jackman playing my favorite Canadian killing machine.)

Spoilers Ahead.

The plot was pretty straightforward.  Ethan Hunt is broken out of a Russian prison to go after a terrorist who is planning to launch a nuclear missile to start World War III.  (The cold war was so great for movie plots.)  The terrorist steals a launch device from the Kremlin and blows up part of it, framing Ethan and his team.  They then attempt to stop him from obtaining the launch codes and when that fails they try to head him off from using a satellite that he needs.

A sub plot involves an analyst and former field agent who is working with hunt’s team.  His last field assignment, we come to find out, was to protect Ethan and his wife.  His wife was killed, and Ethan sent to prison for murdering the Serbians who killed her.

There is tons of action here, everything from explosions, to a chase scene in a sandstorm, to Hunt scaling a wall with sticky gloves.  The gadgets were awesome, but the best of the bunch was the display screen/camera in a contact lens.  Brilliant.  I’m sure that one will be copied in the future.

Acting wise, Cruise was his usual self, not exactly Oscar worthy, but well worth watching.  Simon Pegg was just plain hysterical.  Not much to say about the acting beyond that.

Thanks for reading!