Tim here. After Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol came out in 2011, it seemed that the series had finally figured out how to become the best version of itself and could go on forever doing the same thing. And that's exactly what has now happened: Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation is slightly worse than its immediate predecessor in nearly every way, slightly better in a couple of others that are especially important, and is light years beyond the first three movies released between 1996 and 2006.
Like every M:I film, Rogue Nation is an almost perfect standalone object, with a couple throwaway lines referencing previous adventures and the assumption that you already know and like brash, middle-aged Impossible Missions Force agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise, the series' producer as well), but otherwise assuming that it needs to make its own case for existing (it's enormously gratifying in this age of shared universes and heavily choreographed multi-film narrative arcs that there's still one franchise out there that's willing to just make movies that work solely in reference to themselves. And it does this splendidly, throwing us right into the action with that "Tom Cruise hanging from the side of a plane" setpiece that has been the the focal point of the ad campaign, and building up to bigger and better things from there. [More...]
The story, put together by Christopher McQuarrie (also directing) from an initial draft by Drew Pearce, ends up becoming a little too convoluted and heightened for its own good, but initially, at least, it's a pretty clear piece of spy movie boilerplate: Hunt has been tracking down the mysterious multinational Syndicate, arriving in London, where he's nearly caught and killed, escaping only through the momentary kindness of wavering Syndicate agent Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson). He goes on the run, while territorial CIA director Hunley (Alec Baldwin) manages to have the IMF absorbed into his agency. Six months later, a fugitive Hunt recruits former IMF agent Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg) to help him As Hunley uses this new activity to close the net on Hunt, former IMF higher-up William Brandt (Jeremy Renner) recruits Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames) to help him find Hunt before the CIA can. Meanwhile, Hunt and Benji meet up with Faust, who now reveals herself to be an MI6 agent deep undercover as the right hand of Syndicate leader Solomon Lane (Sean Harris).
That's about where the convolutions kick in, but the draw of the film is never the story: it's grand action sequences and upbeat, easy banter between the various members of the team. All the script needs to do is to construct a plausible enough ludicrous spy thriller that we won't complain about the interstitials. With those goals in mind, Rogue Nation passes all its challenges with flying colors: this is a terrific action movie, and the character beats rank among the best in the franchise. The expanded role given to Pegg pays off well in giving Cruise a reliable comic scene partner, and Renner is a great deal looser and more charismatic than in the last film. The clear stand-out is Ferguson, a Swedish actress making just her second English-language feature here. It's a performance that, in a fair world, we'll all look back on as her great star-making turn; sharing virtually all of her moments with one of modern cinema's most charismatic stars and photogenic faces in the form of Cruise, she nonetheless runs away with the movie. It's a drag that the Mission: Impossible films seem so weirdly committed to limiting themselves to just one significant female character at a time, but at least Ferguson is the best performance of the most complex woman the franchise has witnessed to date.
The setpieces are impressively shot and cut - the great Robert Elswit is on cinematography duties for the second M:I film running, and Eddie Hamilton edits - so that each of them has a different style: the opening plane stunt has lingering wide shots to stress the grand scope of the aerial action; a motorcycle chase regular cuts over to manic bike-mounted cameras. The best sequence, the one destined to be this film's signature piece, is an elaborate multi-tiered fight sequence that follows Hunt's attempt to stop gunmen at an opera performance, exploiting the bombast of "Nessun dorma" from Turandot to give it rhythm and momentum. It's ballsy and insane how much McQuarrie and company encourage us to to flashback to Hitchcock's legendary Albert Hall sequence in The Man Who Knew Too Much; it's beyond belief how well the film ends up doing in that head-to-head comparison.
It's frivolous tosh; but such very enjoyable, confidently-made tosh! This is big-budget major studio summer spectacle-mongering at its best: tightly paced, ambitiously conceived, superbly executed, and greatly enriched by the instincts and wits of its producer-star Cruise, but by no means dependent on him. It's terrifically entertaining, and if it's not smart, at least it's not stupid, and it's certainly never boring or anything less than fully committed to being the most high-energy entertainment it can be.
B+