K-SCORE: 75
Writer/Director: Christopher McQuarrie
Starring: Tom Cruise, Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, Jeremy Renner, Alec Baldwin
Spoiler Level: Moderate
After dinner, as we were doing the dishes, Graham said, “We should watch Mission Impossible III,” and so I told him yet again that this series is way past it’s third entry and the film we have is one of the subtitled ones and he said, “Look, it’s clearly wrong in my head. I stopped paying attention as soon as they stopped numbering them. Numbers make sense to me.”
“The guy is going on sixty and now making these films with the same characters he played in his early thirties and he’s still doing his own stunts.”
Mission Impossible: Ghost - nope - Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, here we go. After four sequels, the creators of Mission Impossible have actually found their rhythm. They know what is exciting and fun about the original and have done some solid mimicry with just enough expansion for things not to be dry. The film has the ultra high-tech, high-stakes everything-is-layered-in-spy-double-crosses, outrageous stunts, fast-paced action ting down. At no point did I feel like the film wasn’t delivering its promised product. Consequently I wasn’t bored, confused, or disappointed. I also wasn’t that invested, attached to the conflict or characters, inspired, touched, or blown away.
The ten minor twist plot is the film’s weakest point. I could predict who was good and who was evil with ease just knowing that the writers wouldn’t have the courage to make the girl evil (e.g) or a teammate character from any of the previous entries, or have Ethan Hunt be wrong, or have his crew actually lose their trust in him. The British guys, on the other hand… they’re looking very suspicious. The stakes are reduced when you know they’re going to successfully pull off all the stunts and thefts and will outwit the villain in the end.
I had some plausibility questions like: what exactly is going on with the electronics backstage in that theater scene such that earpiece feedback results in lights getting raised and lowered? Or how about: what is being stored in the liquid cooling cartridges in vaults 1-150 excluding the coveted vault 108? Who built such a thing and why and why make the tunnel down to it man-sized? And it seemed to me that the evil organization made up of former spies, The Syndicate, has the resources to create chaos worldwide without the $2,000,000,000 untraceable that is the subject of so much spy hijinks, but if they don’t, wouldn’t Ethan and the girl have been better off leaving Lane alone? Certainly the Brit would have been. That money he isn’t supposed to have moved around was already buried. Why’d he go through the trouble of training and monitoring a quintuple agent to dig it up?
And this is really a feature of the whole franchise, but they have to stop with the masks. Tearing off one face to reveal a character is entirely someone else just isn’t that satisfying. Not a cool twist, doesn’t build cool characters, and it creates all kinds of story issues like - well why would anyone wear their real face to any of these espionage events?
But I accepted it all anyway. I understood character motivations, mostly approved of their loyalties, found the villain creepy and menacing, had the McGuffin explained to me, and could accept the plot as a vehicle to provide what I was really there to see.
The action. Tom Cruise is a rare talent. The guy is going on sixty and now making these films with the same characters he played in his early thirties and he’s still doing his own stunts. And the quality shows. He’s the most compelling runner in the history of humankind and just watching him race to the next scene is exciting.
The scenarios they came up with for this one were really great. The plane at the beginning is fantastic and I didn’t predict him almost flying out the cargo door. The circular water chamber is weird and thrilling to watch. It makes you want to try it - you know, without the risk of drowning if possible, which is reminiscent of the famous cable down from the laser vent scene in the original. But the best is the opera backstage fight and counter-sniping battle. The back of a theater lends itself perfectly to Mission Impossible’s style of action and all of those hidden quick-assembly sniper rifles play great roles in the blur of covert operations. You keep trying to figure out who planned what and what anyone’s real goal is and that’s tremendous fun.
Rogue Nation may be built of the same puzzle pieces I’ve seen before, but I wouldn’t want to change it. The film is exciting, enjoyable, and satisfying as is. Tom Cruise never complained about being old, which, in an era of these shit Daniel Craig Bond films, Red, Arnold remakes, and The Expendables is worth a gold star all on its own. And it's true to its franchise. My only serious suggestion: the torturer they called The Bone Doctor should have been called The Orthopedist. Scarier.