Sunday, November 6, 2011 - 4:50 PM CDT

De Palma applies masterful visual planning to an ordinary script targetted to older teenagers. GHOST PROTOCOL will have the action that the MI1 is missing. MI1 needed another huge action set-piece to compliment the action set-piece of the TGV bullet train. And where were the complex shoot-outs? The scene where Ethan has the black hood removed to meet Max for the first time was building up to a huge gunbattle between Max's henchmen and CIA and when nothing happened there was something badly missing at that point! There should have been a shoot-out leading to a high-octane car chase sequence! De Palma as a director for hire was given a below par script and made it better with his visual planning. Based on the trailer GHOST PROTOCOL should be the best of the lot and up there with CASINO ROYALE!!

Sunday, November 6, 2011 - 5:11 PM CDT

With all due respect, Harry, I have to disagree. De Palma hammered out ideas for the script himself with Steven Zaillion in the beginning of the script process for this film, and they did not target their script to teenagers. After that, David Koepp, who had just worked with De Palma on CARLITO'S WAY, which Cruise saw and loved, was brought in to write the screenplay (and later, while filming, Cruise brought in his buddy Robert Towne to touch up some things). But it's a film that carried the tagline, "Expect the unexpected," and I think the hooded Cruise is a great example of that theme-- you seem to have expected a typical gun battle, but what happened was an intriguing conversation between Ethan and Max, followed by the CIA's search for these ghosts who have suddenly disappeared.

Monday, November 7, 2011 - 12:07 AM CST

Haven't we all seen more than enough gun battles and car chases to last us a lifetime?  With MI1, I hoped for more than that, and De Palma delivered.   Much of the charm of the Mission Impossible franchise (at least the TV series and MI1) is that the good guys win by out-clevering the bad guys...not by being better shots and having faster cars. 

Monday, November 7, 2011 - 5:10 PM CST

I remember sitting in a sold-out session of MI1 in 1996 and when Ethan looks at his wrist-watch monitor and see's a gun pointed at Jim Phelps being shot and then we see Phelps bloody hands a kid in cinema yelled out "that's Jim Phelps pointing a gun at himself". That's how obvious it was! A chimpanzee could have seen Phelps was the mole and assassin! CIA would not implicate Ethan as the mole that easily without recovering the dead bodies first. Jack would have been recovered from the elevator shaft, Hanna from the bombed car, Sara's body would have been recovered leaving Ethan, Jim and Claire unaccounted. Obviously the audience knows Ethan is not the mole leaving Jim and Claire as the only options. The CIA does not work that way with all it's resources and budgets. This was a simple script that was certainly not as braintwisting as everyone made out at the time. INCEPTION is a Mission:Impossible film set in the dream world and MI1 should have been that inventive and original! INCEPTION had extensive shoot-outs and car chases with a truly mindbending script. Cruise releasized his mistake with MI1 and with 2 and 3 had shoot-outs and car chases knowing he was making summer holiday entertaiment. Based on the trailer GHOST PROTOCOL has extensive visual spectacle that MI1 only hinted at.