Mission Impossible 4

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It's soon clear why Tom Cruise and his multi-million-dollar production team entrusted the ageing star actor's very valuable franchise to Brad Bird.

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The subtitle of the fourth Mission Impossible would only interest movie geeks seeking a Trivial Pursuit triumph with Ghost Protocol. More geeks and most mainstrean movie buffs will probably remember that it was the first non-animated feature from director Brad Bird (whose Pixar hits included included Ratatouille and, most memorably, The Incredibles, which featured his own unforgettable super-shrieky voice-over for its bossy fashion dominatrix).

It's soon clear why Tom Cruise and his multi-million-dollar production team (including MI3's director JJ Abrams) entrusted the ageing star actor's very valuable franchise to Bird. Their action-adventure vehicle is virtually an animated CGI movie itself, employing a few competent humans to stare, fret, sweat and leap out of the stances stuntmen got them into. At that level of film-making, MI4 is almost as good and definitely less credible than The Incredibles.

Cruise has assembled an able new team. Paula (Deja Vu) Patton joins him for the first time as a gungho lite-black (Obama-style) fighting woman, along with Jeremy (Hurt Locker) Renner as an IMF analyst and new tough buddy role. Simon Pegg, the back-office comic IT boffin in MI3, returns as a field agent, a bumbling Brit smiler counterpointing his US partners' deadly seriousness.

What they are all doing, why and how is little explained. The scenario rushes from one of the setpieces of mega-bucks explosions and car crashes to one of the seconds-counting procedurals in which wires are spliced, magnets and robots teeter, and face masks are manipulated.

There is a stereotypical group of well-cast villains, spies, Russian henchmen and anti-terrorists pirouetted by the screenplay around a calmly mad Swedish nuclear mastermind. Their antics in Moscow are worth the location work around the exploded Kremlin. Similarly, Cruise's gecko-style climbing of Dubai's tallest tower is jolly scenic sensationalism, albeit with an unimpressive sandstorm. India gained a less admirable image for its tourism industry by allowing the team to create a lavish Bollywood ball in which Anil (Slumdog Millionaire) Kapoor had to squander himself as a Lothario billionaire buffoon with supposedly crucial codes to a satellite.

The really crucial plus factor for MI this time is its musical soundtrack. It was hard to imagine any further variations on Lilo Schifrin's mesmerising and ideally tense driving themes being created, let alone the addition of complementary new music which pounds a cineplex's walls and brilliantly underscores the fast-moving action and stunts. Composer Michael Giacchino (who worked on both The Incredibles and Ratatouille for Bird) should be nominated for an Oscar, alongside the sound crew.

(A personal thankyou will go to the first reviewer who explains, with citations from the screenplay, why Ethan Hunt's wife was, and then wasn't, killed and why she - Michele Monaghan - then appears in the movie's very jejune epilogue.)

The epilogue also suggests that Ving Rhames will be returning to the franchise as the MI5 team's boss (replacing the assassinated and uncredited Tom Wilkinson). Maybe Cruise realised that he needs to give himself a bit of female company if his Ethan Hunt is to measure up better beside Bond, Bourne and all the other ageing action stars.