First off, this film is decent. It's still not as fun or engaging as the original M:I movie but it's still decent. About on par with JJ Abram's third movie. The Dubai scenes are great but the Mumbai scenes drag down the movie.
Now that I have the positives out of the way, this movie is terribly overrated.
The female lead agent. Maybe I was spoiled by Whedon's terrific portrayal of the Black Widow character, making her fun, sexy, and realistic all at the same time, but this character was fucking terrible. It had all the elements of bad Hollywood cliches and is everything I hate about how directors and writers portray women. She was too fucking emotional. She's a super-spy; if she couldn't tone it down to accomplish the mission, she would have been rung out of the MIF long ago. She's also really bad at her job. Did she actually do anything positive during the entire film? Most of the time, she was busy fucking something up and Cruise's character would have to swoop in and fix things. Then Bird just had to show her changing clothes during the car chase scene. Really? I expected better from him.
The final fight scene. Ethan Hunt is the super-spy to end all super-spys. He's fighting an aging scientist guy who is carrying a nuclear suitcase. You know what would happen there? Hunt would rip the dude's throat out in 1.2 seconds. Fight over. When a guy is carrying a nuclear suitcase and you're on a timer, all bets are off. You end the fight immediately, especially if the dude is old and not trained to kill people with a paperclip like Hunt. Instead, Bird drags the fight out for what seemed to be 20 minutes. I actually got bored during this scene.
Simon Pegg was decent. I enjoyed watching him play Simon Pegg for the umpteenth time but what bothered me is that he was the guy who shot the baddy fighting Renner over the power switch. Really? Pegg's character, a nerdy tech guy, had to get his redeeming moment but the supposed bad-ass female agent was allowed to continue blundering along, fucking shit up left and right? Why didn't she get to take that shot?
I was lead to believe that this movie was different than most action schlock. It was merely more of the same. That doesn't mean it was a bad film because its action was pretty great at times but the movie left me feeling very flat. A huge disappointment.
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