Movie Events

My Espionage Adventure For ‘Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol’ Blu-ray Release

Simon Pegg and Tom Cruise
Simon Pegg and Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol © Paramount Pictures. All rights reserved

Life is almost always more interesting in the movies than it is in reality.  That’s because Hollywood uses artistic license to entertain us, by embellishing the truth and engaging us with concepts just plausible enough to be real.  No place is this truer than in the spy film genre, which is filled with globe-trotting action heroes like James Bond, Jason Bourne, and Ethan Hunt.  These characters incite epic car chases, gunfights, and explosions wherever they go, relying on elaborate gadgets in order to accomplish their respective missions.  Their films are hardly realistic, but not entirely far-fetched either.

Anticipating its blu-ray release on April 17th, I watched Ethan Hunt’s fourth big screen outing “Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol,” which features enough quality popcorn action sequences and slick spy equipment to keep fans of the genre appeased.  In “Ghost Protocol,” Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his team, are forced to go rogue in order to clear their name, after they are implicated in a bombing of the Kremlin.  Meanwhile, they must also stop the real culprit from instigating global nuclear conflict.

When I watched espionage movies like this one, I used to wonder what parts actually reflect a spy’s experience.  However recently I was lucky enough to satisfy that curiosity, by traveling to the International Spy Museum in Washington DC, where I took part in a full afternoon of behind-the-scenes espionage activities.  My exciting journey helped me uncover which elements in “Ghost Protocol” are actually influenced by fact, and which ones are simply the products of movie magic.

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Evan Crean

Hello! My name is Evan Crean. By day I work for a marketing agency, but by night, I’m a film critic based in Boston, MA. Since 2009, I have written hundreds of movie reviews and celebrity interviews for Starpulse.com. I have also contributed pieces to NewEnglandFilm.com and to The Independent, as a writer and editor. I maintain an active Letterboxd account too. In addition to publishing short form work, I am a co-author of the book Your ’80s Movie Guide to Better Living, which is available on CreateSpace and Amazon. The book is the first in a series of lighthearted self-help books for film fans, which distills advice from ’80s movies on how to tackle many of life’s challenges. On top of writing, I co-host and edit the weekly film podcast Spoilerpiece Theatre with two other Boston film critics. I’m a founding member and the current treasurer for the Boston Online Film Critics Association as well. This site, Reel Recon.com, is a one-stop-shop where you can find links to all of my past and present work. Have any questions or comments after checking it out? Please feel free to email me (Evan Crean) at: ecrean AT reelrecon DOT COM .