Now we’re talking. GHOST PROTOCOL has the perfect blend of tense heist scene espionage alongside exciting practical action stunts. Most importantly, Brad Bird realises a sense of fun that has been sorely missing from these films involving rubber masks and floating magnet suits. The action scenes are coherent in space and time, look great, and actually build a sense of tension.
Perhaps it’s because this was released in a period that I perceive as more or less ‘contemporary’ but it also has fewer dated elements than the previous three: the most prominent dated elements are a. tapping into the three- to four-year period in the early ‘10s when Hollywood tried to make Jeremy Renner happen, and b. that it’s still in the period of Ethan Hunt’s (Tom Cruise) rotating parade of identikit brunettes.