Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation review

The “Mission: Impossible” franchise has become low-stakes cannon of summer-fluff films, and I mean that in a good way. Unlike the Bond franchise, which means a lot of different things to a lot of different people, or the superhero movies that always come with an unfair amount of fan-pressure and canonical expectations, nobody is that invested in the integrity of Ethan Hunt’s continued misadventures in espionage. With that in mind, filmmakers are now allowed a certain amount of freedom to let the movies exist for their own sake and to reinterpret their appeal for newer generations, as most younger fans have not seen the earlier films and practically none of them have watched the 60s TV show in which they’re based.

The last two films in particular have become less about characters realizing anything new about themselves and more about setting up a loose framework for directors to show-off their set-piece skills, upping the ante with new exotic locations and complicated stunt coordination. 

In the first scene of “Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation,” Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is framed for the murder of a fellow agent and forced to go into hiding from his own network. While on the lam, he discovers a shadow cell of spies known as The Syndicate who are organizing global terrorist acts, using trained spy techniques. Hunt must then clear his name and convince his friends to help him take down the mysterious Syndicate leader known as Solomon Kane (Sean Harris). On the way Hunt runs into another British spy named Isla Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) who may or may not be working for or against Kane, and he is forced to decide if he trusts her enough to get close to the core of The Syndicate or to keep her at a careful distance.

As this series has progressed Ethan Hunt has become less and less interesting on an emotional or psychological level. Cruise plays him with confidence and still performs the stunts in a way that looks deceptively effortless, but we are no longer expected to follow hunt as a hero with wants and needs that reflect our own--and sometimes that’s okay. Christopher McQuarrie, who wrote and directed this installment, gives all the movie’s needed humanity to Cruise’s costars like Simon Pegg’s Benji who gets to deliver the best dialogue and Jeremy Renner’s William Brandt who’s slowly transitioning into becoming the franchise’s new lead. With the charisma now in place by the satellite cast, McQuary can concentrate on wowing the audience with gracefully shot and delicately edited sequences of spy verses spy.

In one of the finest pieces of visceral filmmaking all year, McQuary sets an extended set-piece in an opera house, cross cutting between Hunt on the lookout for a group of saboteurs while he is also unknowingly being followed by the cat-like Faust, all while Benji is working behind the scenes in the electrical room. Not unlike Michael Powell’s complicated sequences in films such as “Tales of Hoffman” or the “The Red Shoes”—yes, I really am making this comparison—this scene is beautifully composed to the diegetic opera being performed in the background and reminds us that a good action scene structurally has more in common with the classic movie-musical than some fans might care to acknowledge. We’re also treated to a very thrilling underwater sequence and a smoothly edited motor-cycle chase that’s largely shot from the first-person point-of-view.

I can’t say that I ever cared about the film’s story because most of the plot points are unforgivably lazy and familiar, but “Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation” proves that some films can coast on stock genre tropes and skeletal character motifs, so long as the visual filmmaking is as skillfully executed as it is here.

Grade B -

Originally Published in the Idaho State Journal Aug/2015