Tom Cruise has one sentiment in common with Silk (not Smitha): “I like to offer my fans entertainment,” he declared in Mumbai at the premiere of “Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol” or MI 4 for those in a hurry.
If you're a Mission Impossible fan, you know what to expect. And you're going to get it all on a scale that outruns the other three in the franchise.
If you're a Tom Cruise fan, MI 4 will be Rs. 300 well spent; the world's biggest movie star is in crackling form.
If you're just an average action thriller buff, this is as slick and tech as it gets. Most of the gigs in the movie are standard thriller material, but presented so sumptuously that you somehow don't mind watching them again.
If you're an Anil Kapoor fan, or like to track the alleged inroads Bollywood is making in Hollywood, this will not be good news. Kapoor has but a few minutes of screen time as Brij Nath, a media baron with a roving eye, and though he delivers, this is nowhere near his “Slumdog” outing.
For those too lazy to Google MI 4, a quick plot outline: Ethan Hunt and his colleagues from the Impossible Mission Force (IMF) team have now been delinked from the CIA because of an assignment gone awry, resulting in the Kremlin being blown up. So Hunt and the team are now on their shadowy own, chasing the bad guys with no government support to clean up before or after them.
Their mission, full of satellite codes, computer callisthenics, heart-stopping chases and double-crossing agents takes them to Dubai, where Hunt aka Cruise stages a spectacular action sequence as he swings breathtakingly across the glass facade of the world's tallest building, the Burj Khalifa.
Comparisons are inevitable with our home-grown superstar, Shah Rukh Khan's “Don 2”, another action thriller that releases a week later.
It has to be said that Cruise, at 49, looks in far better shape than SRK and the other two Khans, all of them three years younger than him. In their defence, he has far better technology at his disposal — on and off screen. Plus, of course, money. The budget for MI 4 was $140 million or app Rs. 700 crores at today's pathetic rupee-dollar rate. Chew on that, Don.
Bottomline: Cruise, at 49, looks in far better shape than SRK and the other two Khans
