For a franchise that’s celebrating its 20th anniversary next year, Mission: Impossible is still managing to find new ways to be relevant and most importantly entertaining. When J.J. Abrams made his directorial debut with M:I 3, he not only included the series’ most memorable villain played by the late-great Philip Seymour Hoffman, but he ushered in a bigger scope that somehow still managed to retain an up-close-and-personal sense of danger and characterful importance.
Ghost Protocol upped the ante in terms of sheer scale and physical stunts, with Tom Cruise climbing the side of the world’s tallest building. And now Rogue Nation tries to takes things to another level with every fibre of its being. The result is a blockbuster that’s thoroughly entertaining, delivering an inventive mix of action set-pieces to rival the best of ‘em.
This time the IMF has been disbanded on the recommendation of fed-up CIA director Hunley (Alec Baldwin, often hilariously indistinguishable from his deadpan 30 Rock persona). This leaves Tom Cruise’s agent Ethan Hunt out in the cold as he tries regardless to track down “The Syndicate,” the so-called anti-IMF rogue organization of ex-secret agents from around the world hell bent on exacting world scale attacks. With the help of old pals Benji (Simon Pegg), Luther (Ving Rhames), Brandt (Jeremy Renner) and is-she-or-isn’t-she-bad Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson), he must try and stop The Syndicate while being hunted by the government.
While it’s not as relentlessly, well, fast and furious as something like Mad Max: Fury Road, it provides arguably the summer’s most well-paced blockbuster in terms of placement and variety of action sequences. The marketing for the film has dutifully placed the image of Cruise hanging on the outside of a plane as it takes of at the forefront, drawing in mass audiences with the fact that the 53-year-old superstar actually performed the stunt himself. But Rogue Nation has far more tricks up its sleeve than that, presenting it in a throwaway side-plot that has nothing to do with the main thrust of the story. From that opening, surprisingly short sequence onwards it consistently manages to surprise, no mean feat in an age when audiences know more than ever before about a movie before seeing it on the big-screen.
For all its modern gadgets and globe-trotting adventuring, Rogue Nation is a pleasingly old school film at heart. It’s the closest in spirit to the original ‘60s TV series since Brian De Palma’s 1996 cinematic reboot and makes it feel more like a team effort than ever before. Hunt is a world class secret agent – one really does wonder who would win if he ever went up against Bond and Bourne – but he’s nothing without his team and the film always has that in the back of its mind, if not right at the forefront.
And it’s the camaraderie between the team that’s part of why the film is so enjoyable, each serving their own distinct purpose – they’re better drawn as characters than they’ve ever been – and Pegg’s sardonic yet loveable computer expert Benji providing lots of welcome comic relief from the often breath-taking action sequences. Bringing Swedish stunner Ferguson into the mix is a brilliant move; she more than holds her own against Cruise in the action sequences and, rather refreshingly, she’s not just there as a piece of eye-candy, a stand-out as much, if not more, for her brains and fighting skills as her beauty. Sean Harris makes for a subtly menacing villain, controlling things from behind the curtain like a terrorist Wizard of Oz, although it would have been nice for him to come out to play a little more than he does.
Reuniting with his Jack Reacher director Christopher McQuarrie (he also wrote Cruise vehicles Valkyrie and Edge of Tomorrow), there’s a slick effortless to the action sequences that really help sell the more outlandish moments, finding ways to make what would otherwise be been-there-done-that sequences – notably a showdown above an opera performance – fresh and interesting to look at. From the aforementioned plane sequence to a terrific car/motorcycle chase through the old streets of Casablanca, you’re never short of eye-popping, “how did they do that?” action.
It’s a fairly convoluted plot wrapped inside a simplistic premise, with enough twists and turns to make a Bourne screenwriter’s head spin, but lest we forget McQuarrie wrote one of the kings of keep-you-on-your-toes American cinema – The Usual Suspects – so he makes sure it never gets tied up in knots and most importantly, always keeps things thoroughly compelling. There are times when the plot verges on high farce, namely when it brings a certain British political figurehead into the mix, which can be a bit of a distraction from the action but it has charm to spare and thus just about gets away with it.
There a few other niggles to be had here and there when it comes to plot contrivances needed to things going quickly from A to B but it’d be hard to complain about Rogue Nation in its entirety. As an overall piece of summer blockbuster, it delivers the goods and then some. It’s a film that, with its penchant for genuine stunts, lack of reliance on CGI and a lead actor that prides himself on putting himself through the action ringer for the sake of movie-going spectacle, still provides a breath of fresh air even five films in.