So, unfortunately, because of that, the climax itself ends up feeling anticlimactic. The highlights include a pretty damn cool scene at the Vienna Opera House, the car chase in Morocco, the underwater sequence where Ethan has to switch security profiles. And the latter is really where the movie shines. A terrorist creating havoc around the world manipulates the IMF and British Intelligence to do his doing, there's globetrotting, cool spy gadgets, exciting action sequences.

The narrative itself isn't anything to write home about. As they say, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. It's not that it plays to the genres tropes and cliches, but it does what it does so well that it doesn't really need to reinvent the wheel with its story or its approach. Perhaps that's the wrong term to use, because it's not like these films have reinvented the espionage genre, far from it. Not that it's the best popcorn movie I've ever seen, but there's no denying that the Mission Impossible franchise, ever since Christopher McQuarrie has taken over the creative helm, has seen a creative resurgence with both Ghost Protocol and this movie. When you talk about popcorn entertainment at the movies, this is the picture that I imagine in my mind. But that's really irrelevant in the long run, because what matters is that this movie is an absolute blast to watch.

So that was strange, even though in this film it's, ultimately, revealed to be part of a set-up, but it was still strange to see the film pretty much do the same thing at the beginning as the previous film in the franchise. The IMF is shut down, essentially, in both movies.

I don't remember much of Ghost Protocol, the previous film in the MI franchise, but looking back at its description on this site, starts off with a very similar premise.

Jeremy renner mission impossible 5