I had attended a baseball game (Samsung Lions vs. LG Twins) with my friend Nam-Il during the summer of 2011, and he asked me to join him at a movie six months later. Which one? He said that was up to me. A different friend recommended Mission: Impossible—Ghost Protocol, and another gave it thumbs up, as did another after that. Nam-Il was pleased to hear that I wanted to attend a screening of this very popular film. Saying I “wanted” to see it is not quite correct; however, I was willing to do so.
The problem is that I have a strong non-fiction bias. I am not a film buff, and I care little for pop culture. The books I read are almost exclusively reality-based, although I read a novel given to me by a student three years ago. And, hey, it was OK! But in general, I do not favor stories that spring from a writer’s head. I like things—books, for the most part—that are based on real people and events. This may help explain why I had seen just one other movie since coming to Korea in late 2007. In case you are wondering, it was the animation film Kung Fu Panda, which did not lack value since it made me laugh several times. But these convoluted, fast-paced, “action” movies do not appeal to me. I knew what my response would be even before Nam-Il and I settled into the plush seats of the CGV theater in Gangnam.
Of course, I was aware of Mission: Impossible, the American television series featuring Peter Graves which ran from 1966 to 1973. I watched it many times during my adolescence, and it was well done. That was TV, and it was 40 years ago, so the film version of today was sure to be quite different. Nam-Il and I would watch the fourth installment in the Mission: Impossible series; he had seen the first three and was quite enthusiastic about them. He boasted of having once met the director, Brad Bird. How little did I know about it before? I was not even aware that Tom Cruise was the star.
The movie cost $145 million to produce and had grossed more than twice that between its world premier on December 7, 2011 and the night we saw it three weeks later. Mission: Impossible—Ghost Protocol had impressed the critics. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times seemed to regard it as a cinematic tour de force. I have since talked to other people who saw the film, and they agree that it is excellent. I don’t want to be overly negative or seem like a curmudgeon lacking the ability to relax and enjoy. In fact, the acting was quite good and I can say the same for the soundtrack. I enjoyed the outdoor shots of cities such as Budapest, Moscow, Mumbai, Dubai and Seattle. I would go so far as to call it entertaining.
But I had to be the least-involved patron in the entire theater. Keeping up with the plot was hopeless, and I quit trying—literally—about 2 minutes into the film. There were so many elaborate, computer-aided stunts involving Cruise and his buds Jeremy Renner, Simon Pegg and Paula Patton that I never quite knew what they were supposedly trying to achieve. In a movie like this, you just kind of roll with it. Even when we were informed what “Ghost Protocol” was, I paid scant attention. During most of the movie’s 133 minutes, my thoughts were along this line:
• “Yeah, right!”;
• “Oh, please”;
• “Utterly implausible”;
• “Huh?";
• “Oh, come on”; and
• “I don’t think so."
As mentioned earlier, I am one of the very few who were less than enthralled with Mission: Impossible—Ghost Protocol. I am simply not into fantasy. Call me boring, or unable or unwilling to suspend disbelief, but I prefer to learn about what’s true, what’s real, what’s going on in this world. The film had a surfeit of crashes, explosions, fights and shootings. In the denouement, some bad Rooskies sent a nuclear missile toward the USA but at the last millisecond, our boy Cruise performed yet another miraculous deed and prevented it from detonating. Big surprise there!
Add Comment