Mission: Impossible -- Ghost Protocol (2011)

Never discount Tom Cruise. Whatever his quirks, he is a blazing fireball on screen, and his latest Ethan Hunt outing -- “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol” according to the credits, but “Mission: Impossible: There’s an App for That” by my reckoning from the countless Apple plugs -- is the best of the series. Brad Bird, director of animated hit “The Incredibles,” has fashioned the Hollywood Action Film of 2011, a spectacle of stunts – from the side of Dubai’s Burj Khalife skyscraper to a high-rise robotic car park in central Mumbai – that boggles the mind because I’ll be damned if I could see the CGI seams. Using IMAX cameras, Bird makes a packed theater gasp in wonder at the high heights and then wince at every plummet. The plot shenanigans are mostly second-rate as Hunt and his M:I team (Paula Patton, Simon Pegg and Jeremy Renner) hunt a madman (Michael Nyqvist) who sees nuclear war as humanity’s best hope. Renner’s dull agent is so badly written, you can see hope die in the actor’s eyes when he has to speak. But the stunts and action atop the world’s tallest building are for the ages. Witness Cruise re-born as an unstoppable movie star. A-