Pun Salad

One reliable rule of thumb for movie-watching over the past decade or so: see anything that has Brad Bird's name on it. That would have steered you to Ratatouille, The Incredibles, and The Iron Giant. But do his talents extend to directing a live action movie? Sure they do.

The story here opens with Mr. Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) cooling his heels in a Moscow prison. (He's there for reasons that aren't fully revealed until the end of the movie, so be patient.) Just down the road in Budapest, his IMF co-workers are busy trying to steal some MacGuffin from the bad guys. This ends in disaster; before you can say "Hey, it's That Guy from Lost", That Guy From Lost gets shot and the MacGuffin ends up in the hands of some very bad guys, headed by That Guy From The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. It turns out he has an insane scheme to trigger a nuclear war between Russia and the US.

That's a desperate enough situation for the surviving IMF team (That Guy From Shaun of the Dead and That Girl From… actually, I don't remember her in anything) to break Ethan out of prison, and attempt to heist a different MacGuffin from the bowels of the Kremlin. But That Guy From The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo gets there first, blows up a pretty good chunk of Moscow, and frames Ethan for the crime. In all the hubbub, "The Secretary", the IMF's boss, gets killed. Things are very bad.

(Also appearing: That Guy From The Hurt Locker and That Guy From Slumdog Millionaire.)

It's an action-packed thrill ride, with numerous big-budget special effects set in unusual and/or spectacular locations. We splurged, and saw it on a (very) large screen with a (very) loud audio system in Newington. I think that was a good idea; if you're into this sort of thing, it's definitely one to see in a theatre at least.