A lot of critics went gaga over this installment in the Mission: Impossible franchise – which marked the live-action directorial debut of Brad Bird – but I found Ghost Protocol to be only mildly inventive. The showstopper of Tom Cruise clinging to the glass of that skyscraper in Dubai is thrilling, to be sure. And I like how an opening prison escape appears to be modeled after a Busby Berkeley musical number, of all things. Yet all in all this didn’t completely quell the sigh I expressed when I first heard Bird had taken the job. With Jeremy Renner, Simon Pegg and Paula Patton.
