Pun Salad

Probably the last of the summer blockbusters we'll get to. We waited for the hoopla to die down some, and it was pretty easy to get our usual seats. (Third row center, baby!)

Ethan Hunt (played by a young actor named Tom Cruise) and his team (minus Jeremy Renner) are back. So is the lunatic evil genius from the previous movie, with a new wicked apocalyptic scheme.

You might understand what's going on better if you remember the previous movie. Unfortunately, I thought the previous movie was pretty forgettable, and hence… I forgot most of the details. Sigh.

The bad guy's plans include mass terror and death, sure. That's standard operating procedure. But they also involve exacting personal revenge on Ethan and his ex-wife. Someone should have told the bad guy that adding needless complications to your nefarious plots can increase chances for failure.

So: masks, deceptions, fights, chases, gunplay, betrayal. The action is not non-stop, but when it starts, it goes on for a long time. It's imaginative and (often) funny. I could joke about how Tom Cruise does his own stunts, as described in many articles out there, but… you know what? I actually consider this kind of awesome.

And yes, it's "good". In the sense that I didn't fall asleep. But there are little "this is a movie" moments. For example, the doomsday McGuffin is weirdly complex, in a way that invites you to think: "yeah, that design kind of dictates exactly how the last scenes are going to play out."