Mission Impossible Rogue Nation Review: “The best yet…”

Mission Impossible Rogue Nation review: Tom Cruise is back in quite possibly the best film in the series. Action-packed, unrelenting, fun-filled and extremely funny, Rogue Nation delivers in spades.

Mission Impossible Rogue Nation review

It could be questioned as to why the world needed another Mission: Impossible movie. Tom Cruise and his mates have been churning out these films since the mid-nineties, and with him now knocking on into his fifties, we have to ask if he’s still able to keep up with the best of them.

After securing some pretty major directors for the previous four instalments (Brian De Palma, John Woo, J.J. Abrams and Brad Bird), all stamping their own mark and style on the franchise, number five goes to a former writer turned director (with just two other credits to his name) in Christopher McQuarrie – the man that set the world alight in the mid-nineties with The Usual Suspects. Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation is the biggest, and most ambitious M:I adventure yet.

As we’ve seen in the trailers and featurettes that Paramount have delivered over the past few months, M:I 5 is full of physical action set piece after action set piece, starting with that sequence with the Cruise hanging off the side of a plane. The Burj-Khalifa sequence from Ghost Protocol was always going to be the one to match, and while the plane sequence does deliver awe and spectacle, it falls within the film’s opening scene, so the viewer has to ask if that high-velocity pace and grandeur  can be matched in the 120 minutes that follows. For the most part, it does.

Mission Impossible Rogue Nation review

The plot of Rogue Nation isn’t that hard to follow. Cruise and co.- Simon Pegg’s Benji, Ving Rhames’ Luthor and Jeremy Renner’s Brandt – the IMF – are in a spot of bother and have been disbanded by new chief of the C.I.A. Alec Baldwin, with Cruise’s Ethan Hunt falling off the radar completely. When a mysterious outfit named ‘The Syndicate,’ headed up by Sean Harris’ evil villain, who starts offing people and causing catastrophic global terrorist attacks, Hunt tasks himself with coming out of hiding and track them all down.

From the Bond-like opening scene, which bears no relevance to the rest of the movie, it is evident that this film belongs to Cruise and Pegg. The duo spend literally every moment from start to finish together, and their bromance excalates as the flick progresses. This is no bad thing as Pegg’s Benji Dunn has been the best addition to the series over the last couple of movies, and he is easily the best thing about Rogue Nation. His wit, charm and comedic banter are ever present here, and you have to question as to how much he contributed to the dialogue in McQuarrie’s script, as it has the Pegg stamp all over it. New to the series for Rogue Nation is Stockholm born actress Rebecca Ferguson, whose largest role to date was in Brett Ratner’s Hercules movie and in the award-winning drama The White Queen, where she was exceptional. Here she plays the role of Ilsa, who we can’t quite work out whose side she’s on for most of the film. Ferguson is also excellent here, joining the returning hands of Ving Rhames and Jeremy Renner, who just about get involved enough to warrant their big-name prescence. Harris is also effective as the slimey bad-guy, whose sinister villian delights every time he’s on screen – even if that screen time is limited to nothing more than just a small scattering of scenes.

Mission Impossible Rogue Nation review

McQuarrie proves his worth as a relatively new director to the big-budget world following an excellent debut with The Way Of The Gun over fifteen years ago, and the more recent Jack Reacher, which also obviously starred Tom Cruise. McQuarrie delivers an excellently paced film with a bunch of stand-out scenes. Notables are the excellently edited opera stand-off in the first reel; a foreboding, suspenseful sequence set to the sound of Nessun Dorma, and the ‘impossible’ heist half way through which we’ve seen featured in the many trailers; a sequence where Cruise must hold his breath underwater for over six-minutes to obtain an important piece of evidence, a scene that echoes elements of the famous ‘hanging wire’ scene from the first movie, albeit with a 2015 twist.

Mission Impossible Rogue Nation review

Of course there are the negatives. The film’s spark fizzles out somewhere in the middle of the final reel, and the ending is more a damp squib compared to the big bang of the five or six excellently executed action scenes that lead up to it. The dialogue in places is questionable and very hammy, and nearly wanders into the realms of spoof as we approach the disappointing climax. That said, Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation is lots of fun, and could just be one of my favourite movie experiences of the summer so far. It’s extremely funny, gloriously action-packed, and I love the dynamic between Cruise and Pegg this time around. The action sequences are unrelenting; the stunts are mind-blowing and Cruise is back on top form as one of his best recurring characters. It might be the best in the series so far.

Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation review by Paul Heath, July 2015