Genre: Action
Rating: PG-13
Gold Rate
13 June 2025
Running Time: 132 minutes
In Christopher McQuarrie’s Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation- the fifth film keeping that inflammable Lalo Schifrin theme-tune from the sixties still hot, Hollander has flown up the ranks enough in order to play the Prime Minister of England.
Cruise has produced all five M: I films, with a different director putting their personal stamp on each entry. This time around, Cruise enlisted his Jack Reacher director and his screenwriter of Valkyrie and Edge of Tomorrow (sorry – Live Die Repeat), Christopher McQuarrie (he also wrote Usual Suspects). The movie was originally set for release at Christmas, but Paramount moved it up to avoid the Star Wars juggernaut and the aftermath of Spectre.
Nearly everyone, as a matter of fact, in the new Mission Impossible movie, appears significantly dunderheaded with the exception of the all-conquering leading man and — in a rather nice switch — the leading lady (who is, refreshingly enough, not his leading lady).
There’s Alec Baldwin, every bit the CEO of GE, using words like “salvageable assets” while describing a spy organisation; there’s Jeremy Renner, wearing a well-cut suit and a permanent scowl; there’s Simon Pegg, playing Halo wearing exquisite headphones and, later, doing all the damsel-in-distress screaming a movie can handle.
Then there’s Ving Rhames saying he can handle it (in a thick voice) and then failing to do so; and there’s Sean Harris playing a big cold villain who is basically Blofeld without a monocle!
He could have used some reflection at the end of this film. All these men, at various points of the film, look utterly useless.
Tom Cruise is 53, and, having swigged from the elixir of eternal youth, eager to show off the results. He is, in the best sense of the term, an old-school superstar, the sort they don’t make anymore. He’s a cocksure, attractive hero with one helluva smile who wears his invincibility casually, like a light sports-jacket.
Despite the name of the franchise, nothing seems remotely impossible, or even unlikely, for Cruise’s Ethan Hunt.
And, in a move Bond-movies can learn from, she the woman. Rebecca Ferguson plays a crafty double-agent called Ilsa Faust, a woman introduced to us, one must confess, a bit too sexually, but one who promptly throws off the femme fatale stereotype to pick up a sniper-rifle instead.
She might look good in heels but she slips ‘em off whenever action calls.
The villain, played by Sean Harris, has a creepy look but is otherwise not very menacing or memorable. Apart from Philip Seymour Hoffman in M:I-3, villains have been a real problem for this franchise. The viewer is asked to suspend a lot of disbelief with some of the action and what characters would be able to walk away from. As Julie mentioned, apart from Ferguson, the lack of females on screen is a bit distracting.
Should You See It? Definitely. As the dog days of August roll in, you won’t find a better movie in theaters than this. Between Rogue Nation and Mad Max: Fury Road, it’s been a great summer for action.
RATING:
