Tom Cruise just won't let this franchise self-destruct. Tom Cruise’s rock-hard commitment to being an action hero you have no choice but to accept this most convoluted of sequels.Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation
Tom Cruise Simon Pegg Jeremy Renner
You can shoot him, stab him, drown him, blow him up or pair him with Thandie Newton, but you can’t stop Ethan Hunt, because he’s played by Tom Cruise . Returning to make a mockery of the series title for a fifth time, Cruise ploughs through Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, a sequel that is slick with silliness, but peppered with enough wit and peril to sustain the franchise’s momentum.
Cruise is – obviously – the definitive modern movie star. A bizarre and indefatigable charismatic force that can make the bad watchable and the average – like Rogue Nation – actually quite fun. It’s all here: the gee-shucks boyishness, the pointy-hand sprinting, the toplessness – conscripted into the service of a secret agent yarn that’s hustled into shape by his Jack Reacher cohort, writer-director Christopher McQuarrie.
Following the plot is a mission in itself. Hunt’s team, the Impossible Mission Force, has been demonized by the new CIA chief (Alec Baldwin), who has successfully campaigned for it to be disbanded after the IMF were implicated in an attack on the Kremlin. Hunt’s on the run, and his unit – right-hand-man Brandt (Jeremy Renner) and tech whizz Benji (Simon Pegg) – has been co-opted by the CIA. Meanwhile, the Syndicate, a multinational group of ex-operatives, has started to wreak havoc across the globe, because that’s what the world needs to recover from recession, or over-population, or the X-Factor, or something. Hunt will have to re-assemble his unit and tackle whatever-it-is without government say-so. As ever, there are lists to be stolen, discs to be forged and accomplices that may or may not be building up to a Scooby Doo ending . One of them is MI6 agent Ilsa (Rebecca Ferguson), who has got close to the Syndicate’s boss (Sean Harris). Maybe, just maybe, too close.
If writer-director McQuarrie was daunted by the prospect of following Ghost Protocol, Brad Bird’s franchise reviver, it’s not showing. Rogue Nation carries the scorch marks of Bird’s work and Brian de Palma’s original, but its key influences are the campy spy cinema of Roger Moore-era James Bond and Sydney Newman’s 1960s TV series, The Avengers.
The light-hearted tone is mostly due to an expanded role for Pegg, who again proves himself proficient at looking astonished and/or peeved at the cool stuff Tom Cruise is doing. It allows for plenty of implausibility, but sometimes McQuarrie stretches his licence to the limit. The spies – left to blow in the breeze by agency and country – are stunned that their state would betray them. Benji, who claims to be a field agent, is terrified when he’s not mystified. Elsewhere, there are story details that need to be snuck past the audience. Hunt’s first encounter with the Syndicate’s kingpin occurs in an IMF field office disguised as a record store, complete with listening booths. The hideout at the fax machine factory was booked maybe?
Occasionally, this goofiness plays in Rogue Nation’s favour. Alec Baldwin, who looks to be ticking along sedately in the role of chief suited spook, suddenly vaults for immortality with an extraordinary delivery of one line (“Huuuuunt is the living manifestation of destiny!!!”) that could win him an Oscar and a Razzie simultaneously.
Nothing much changes, but it at least feels like everything is up for renewal. Shockingly, the theme music is – after an initial blast – sabotaged. Instead the film’s most exciting sequence – a tussle between Hunt and three assassins sent to murder the Austrian chancellor at the Vienna State Opera – is soundtracks by the on-stage performance of Nessun Dorma. The assassins’ fatal shot is due at the end of the line: “The silence that makes you mine!”. It’s not Rififi, but it’s still a beautifully managed action sequence. Unconventional and quite brave for a mainstream franchise picture.
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