Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol  ★★★½

PEOPLE can say what they want about Tom Cruise (and do) but the bloke has nerves of steel.

I can watch umpteen horror movies, but when he steps outside the windows of the monstrously high Burj Hotel above the desert in Dubai in Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol (2011), the fear of heights forces me to look away slightly, even when watched from my lounge chair.

It’s an incredible stunt for an A-list Hollywood star and when you see the Blu-ray special features you realise how long he actually spent hanging around hundreds of feet in the air.

Cruise’s stunts aside, the Mission Impossible series, apart from a hiccup with part two filmed in Australia, has been consistently good. Part of the reason for this is that the film sticks closely to the basics of the original television series.

The plot is nearly always the same – completion of one mission with tragic consequences; misinterpreted events that lead to disavowal of Ethan Hunt’s Impossible Mission Force (IMF) team; a complex unofficial mission full of spectacular action that leads to redemption.

For what is basically an action/thriller series, Mission Impossible goes to extraordinary lengths in its detail, perhaps a by-product of its star Cruise pushing everyone to their limits in following his lead.

As usual, there are nuclear codes being stolen by an unhinged criminal intent on starting a third world war and Hunt’s team swings into action. They all interesting characters, as played by Simon Pegg, Paula Patton and Jeremy Renner, and bring colour, depth and some levity to the amazing action sequences.

In the Mission Impossible series, this fourth instalment is probably the most spectacular. The Burj stunt is also the best of the entire series but, for sheer audacity, the original 20-minute silent, Brian De Palma directed raid on a secret stronghold within the Pentagon, remains the high watermark.