Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol

I was fortunate enough to see the latest Mission Impossible outing at the IMAX in Waterloo. Having never been to an IMAX before, just walking in the door was pretty impressive. The 6min Batman trailer certainly helped to get me in the mood for a great film, so the bar was set pretty high for Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol.

So how did it get on? Honestly, I wouldn’t say it was anywhere near the best film I’ve ever seen, but it certainly kept me entertained. Tom Cruise returns as Ethan Hunt and doesn’t disappoint alongside his team – Paula Patton, Jeremy Renner and novelty Brit Simon Pegg.

In terms of the cast, I’m not a Simon Pegg fan at the best of times. He always seems to play the same character and seems to give away his excitement at having made it in Hollywood. However, fortunately he slotted into this film pretty well and didn’t distract me with his general irritating qualities – phew! The rest of the cast which pretty impressive – the actions scenes were great and there’s really nothing to complain about.

The story line had a few twists and turns but wasn’t particularly groundbreaking. The explosion at the Kremlin was pretty incredible and I still find it entertaining that the age old Russian’s versus American’s continues to feature in these types of films. When the location switches to Dubai, the action scenes were pretty insane – particularly given the view in the IMAX.

Generally speaking, this film does exactly what you’d expect. Tom Cruise has always impressed me in this role and the latest in the franchise ticked the box as far as I was concerned. A very solid 8/10 (definitely boosted by the IMAX screen though) Kx

Burke and Hare

Having seen Simon Pegg and Andy Serkis promoting this film like crazy across various media outlets, and with a whole selection of famous faces involved, I had quite high hopes for this film.

Based on the true story of two 19th century grave robbers who find a lucrative business providing dead bodies to an Edinburgh surgery school, it doesn’t immediately scream comedy. However, Pegg and Serkis certainly bring a special relationship and confident comedy timing to the story. Also of note, Tim Curry and Tom Wilkinson are great in their roles as the heads of competing medical schools in Edinburgh. In fact, most of the cast I thought had been picked out well…..other than Jessica Hynes as Serkis’ wife, Lucky. To be honest, she’s not really my cup of tea at the best of times. In Spaced I didn’t really like her and, having recently been at an event she spoke at, found her a bit off beat then.

However, special mention does go out to Simon Pegg’s love interest, played by Isla Fisher – for an Aussie, that’s quite a Scottish accent to pull out of the bag!

All in all, I found this film to be pretty weak. Granted it’s been a long week, but I did manage to fall asleep for the last 10mins of the showing – and it’s certainly true to say that I didn’t laugh out loud at any point.

This week it was announced that they may look into filming audience reactions in cinemas to determine exactly what works and what doesn’t. Well I’m afraid to say if they were to have filmed me during this performance, they wouldn’t have had many positives to take from my reaction. A weak film, despite a strong cast – always an unfortunate outcome. At best, 6/10 Kx