'Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol' Rio Red Carpet Premiere

'Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol' Rio Red Carpet Premiere

They've done without the number this time, but anyone who cares knows that "Mission
Impossible — Ghost Protocol" is really "Mission Impossible 4," the fourth time Tom
Cruise's intrepid Ethan Hunt has taken on the evildoers of the world. And the fourth
time a different adventurous director has orchestrated the action.

The story begins inauspiciously. Hunt is confined in a Moscow prison, for reasons we
don’t learn till much later. Carter and Dunn bust him out, and they all set off in
search of the nuclear launch codes that are a key component of Hendricks’ scheme.
There’s an unexpected complication, though: The Kremlin explodes (in a burst of
exemplary CGI) and Evans’ team is set up to take the blame. At this point, the
government disavows all knowledge of the IMF, leaving Evans and his little band to
accomplish their mission with no further support. Since the launch codes have fallen
into the hands of a pouty freelance assassin named Moreau (strikingly upholstered Léa
Seydoux), and she’s on her way to Dubai to hand them over to Hendricks, Evans and company
have no time to mope over their new outcast status.

Unsurprisingly, the marketing for Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol has focused on the
capital-b Big. Moments like the Kremlin blowing up or Tom Cruise dangling off the world's
tallest building on the planet. We've seen gunfights, fistfights, explosions, fast cars,
gorgeous women, and, of course, Tom Cruise running really fast. The movie is also being
released in IMAX, so all those huge moments are going to be even bigger. It's kind of cool,
then, that the new poster advertising Ghost Protocol's IMAX release is an exercise in subtlety.
IGN got its hands on the poster, and you can check it out below.

As for Downey, he seems already to have exhausted the possibilities of this jokey, wisecracking
Holmes, who’s little more than an ornament on a movie of such contemporary action-flick excess.
The Holmes of Conan Doyle’s stories would easily have figured that out. If only someone had
thought to consult him.