Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol - 2011 - 3½ Stars

Actors:  Tom Cruise, Jeremy Renner
Director:  Brad Bird

Mission: Impossible has always had a relation to media since the TV show began in the 1960s - think of 'This tape will self-destruct in 5 seconds'.  The idea of disappearing, erasable, non-traceable items, posing as other people, etc.  It's fared a lot better with technology than its 1960s franchise counterpart Star Trek - the idea of fully manned spacecraft now seems absurd.  But spies in an era of facial recognition technology and drones?  Still necessary.  Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol's best sequence involves the use of a 'real', intra-movie special effect to deceive someone, which both functions as great visual fun as well as a nod to how much film special effects and the conceits of the spy film (and perhaps espionage in general) owe to one another.  In addition, it gets around the problem of modern cinema where a character is sitting at a computer looking intently and typing furiously - due to machinations of a particular plot, these computer scenes are often considered action.

I wanted to rate this higher, but action films today (well, not just today, Hitchcock's films often have this issue) have a problem with the final setpiece because you know how the film has to end.  Still, for the first 90 minutes, this movie is as good as modern action films get - low exposition, minimal character development, but still high tension and excitement.