Wick's Review

Summary - Really Great 4.5

Best. Mission: Impossible. Ever.

Please Mr. Cruise, can we have another? Rogue Nation succeeds spectacularly well from the opening credits till the closing line, the very iconification of extremely entertaining action-movie hyper-reality.

This fifth M:I movie is the first to envelope a still potent and ever debonaire Tom Cruise with the killer music and trademark tricks of the original TV series, starting with Lalo Schifrin’s Theme from Mission: Impossible. Plus writer-director Christopher McQuarrie incorporates not one but two latex masks and not one but two “Your mission, if you choose to accept it” ultimatums. That’s proper use of your inheritance.

The result is that we finally get a big screen Mission: Impossible that’s clearly better than the TV series, and not just because of the $150 million budget and iconic moviestar who plays Ethan Hunt. M:I5 is better because it’s crazy yet coherent like the series was, features several spectacular action set-pieces that are also tongue-in-cheek, has a solid villain, two terrific foils, and a boffo set of visual and musical adornments.

Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation ends by setting up its sequel. Please Mr. Cruise, don’t make us wait too long. We can only hold our breath a certain amount of time. Ethan Hunt knows how tough that can be.

Acting - Really Great 4.5

Tom Cruise not only looks and acts ageless, he clearly still enjoys being a popcorn moviestar. He prefaces several set-pieces with a wry look or nod, as if to say “I know this is all silly, but it sure is fun.” Cruise long ago made his bones as a serious actor (specifically in Interview with the Vampire), so has nothing left to prove. Thus he can be enjoyed as perhaps the greatest blockbuster moviestar of all time.

His IMF Team are somewhat underwhelming, but have earned our affection by this installment, so it’s ok.

• Simon Pegg provides comic relief as Cruise’s hapless technician. It’s not Pegg’s best performance, but he’s such a consummate comedic actor, his subpar is better than most funny guys’ best.
• Jeremy Renner also underwhelms as Cruise’s superior.
• Ving Rhames doesn’t get much to work with and doesn’t elevate what he does get.

The bad guys are mostly first-rate, as is the beauteous double-agent and bureaucratic foils.

• Rebecca Ferguson delivers a star-making performance as an MI6 agent who plays both sides of the street. Ferguson isn’t supermodel gorgeous, but is moviestar alluring, proving that great actresses become more bewitching the more the camera caresses them.
• Sean Harris is a great supervillain, an essential role in any action movie. His rodent-like face is weirdly interesting, plus he’s a low talker, which becomes mesmerizing as the movie progresses. Harris first got my attention as Cesare Borgia’s henchman in The Borgias.
• Alec Baldwin is lip-smackingly good as the director of the CIA, his projectile-like head a weapon of bureaucratic destruction.
• Simon McBurney is snivelingly odious as the head of MI6.
• Tom Hollander delivers several funny lines as the Prime Minister of England.
• Hermione Corfield makes a strong impression in her single scene. No wonder she’s in several movies all of a sudden.

Film - Really Great 4.5

What does $150 million buy you? Fifty stuntmen, location shots in London, Vienna (including at the Opera House during a full opera), Morocco, Paris, Kuala Lumpur, and amazing hyper-reality action set-pieces. But the best thing first-time Mission: Impossible writer-director Christopher McQuarrie did was to embrace the music and tropes of the TV series that inspired these Tom Cruise mega-movies.

That starts with what is still the best TV theme ever. When McQuarrie starts pumping that out while Tom Cruise is executing a jaw-dropping “package removal” operation from a huge military air transport in the opening scene, you know you’re in blockbuster heaven. BTW, that scene is all over the trailers and on the poster above. Yet it doesn’t feel overplayed in the movie, in no small part due to several comical moments.

This all stands in contrast to the disappointing Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, where the estimable Brad Bird chose to dramatically downplay the same elements.

Edge - Risqué 2.0

Reality - Supernatural 3.5

M:I5 is a prime example of a Jonesian hyper-reality action movie. For starters it focuses on a mortal man who can effectively outrun hails of gunfire and possesses a supernatural ability to absorb punishment.

Plus, tremendously complex scenarios always play out perfectly, with every detail falling exactly into place.

Movie phoniness aside, there’s a line about a terrorist organization coming into $100 billion and thereby becoming “a terrorist superpower.” Iran immediately jumped to mind, as they’re about to come into more than that from the Obama/Kerry/Clinton nuke deal. Whatever its flaws as a nuke retardant, it’s guaranteed to turn Iran from the terrorist superpower they are now into an incredibly well funded terrorist superpower.

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