The M:I series has always prided itself on staying fresh. Well… Tonally fresh at least, considering that story wise, a Mission: Impossible movie usually contains a mission popping up – usually involving a corrupt agent – that seems impossible which Tom Cruise’s Ethan Humt summarily disproves while running a lot. The secret behind how the franchise has stayed fresh is both time (5 movies in 19 years isn’t exactly a voracious output) and, more importantly, a variety in directors. Each director has come prepared with a different vision from the last helmer to accept the mission to keep the franchise interesting and as a result, we’ve had Brian De Palma’s tricksy Hitchcockian one, John Woo’s cheesy, romantic, gun-fighty one, JJ Abrams’ sweaty tense one and Brad Bird’s fun, rollercoastery one.
Well now we have the Christopher McQuarrie directed one and the main thing he brings to ever-improving franchise is something that dons the metaphorical masks of every auteur that’s come before that merges their best aspects to create possibly the most rounded entry yet. A mission I would have thought to be… well, you know.
After opening the film with a staggering, death defying feat that most films would have ended with, endlessly inventive super spy Ethan Hunt continues his search for a shadowy group of rogue operatives known only as the Syndicate. However, the debate that some areas in the international intrigue community doesn’t believe this force even exists is suddenly rendered null and void when Ethan himself is taken off the board by the Syndicate’s raspy-voiced figurehead, rogue MI6 agent Solomon Lane. However, after escaping torture thanks to some enviable upper-body strength and a mysterious agent call Ilsa Faust, Hunt escapes only to discover that the IMF has been decommissioned and assimilated into the CIA thanks to the efforts of Director Alan Hunley. Realising that he truly is all alone in this Hunt vanishes, leaving past teammates, such as Benji Dunn and William Brandt to either sign up with the CIA, or retire altogether like long-term Hunt enabler, Luther Stickell.
Six months later and Dunn suddenly gets sucked back into all the typical cloak and dagger shenanigans when Hunt suddenly resurfaces with a plan to take down the man who managed to actually outmanuver him by drawing him out by thwarting his nefarious schemes. This seemly insurmountable task is made all the complicated when you consider that the CIA believes that it’s actually Ethan who is the rogue and has sent Brandt out to find him, but it seems that it’s the incredibly suspicious Faust that may yet be the key to Lane’s downfall.
It’s just a shame that Hunt has no idea who Faust truly is or even who she’s really working for; a fact that proves to be immensely problematic considering that he’ll have to put his faith in her if he’s ever going to out-think his sinister nemesis.
On first glance, McQuarrie seemed rather a low key choice to contine the ever more improbable adventures of the IMF, but a quick flick through his CV hinted that he’d actually be perfect. Being the scripter of The Usual Suspects he knows outlandish plot twists and a duplicitous team dynamic pretty well; having directed the criminally underseen The Way Of The Gun, he proved he can handle extended complicated action scenes and finally, the twin projects of directing Jack Reacher and script polishing on Edge Of Tomorrow proves that, most importantly, he’s got quite the handle on Tom Cruise.
Ah, yes. The Cruise. Here on top plane-hanging form, I’m genuinely scared that the only way he’s gonna top himself now is surely to free-fall from space with no oxygen while disarming a bomb in the shape of a Chinese finger trap. As super-tense and inhumanly charismatic as ever, as the driving force of the whole damn show for nearly twenty years, he’s made an interesting shift in focus here and descided that he’s not entirely the main focus of the plot. No, in a wise Mad Max: Fury Road style wrinkle, the character who galvanizes and drives the whole deal is actually Ilsa Faust, a cracking new character fantastically played by Rebecca Ferguson, who proves to be an agent every bit of Ethan Hunt’s equal and you, much like the rest of the cast, are never sure whose side she’s actually on. Is she helping Ethan for the greater good? Or is she playing him for her own ends? Or is she working for shadowy, evil inc organization, The Syndicate? Or is she still employed by the British government? Or none of them? Or all of them? She flips more times than a hyperactive pancake maker and it’s gripping stuff. Plus, five movies in, we’ve grown used to seeing Cruise (and to a slightly lesser extent Ving Rhames) pull this shit no less than five times, with comedy relief extraordinaire Simon Pegg chalking up his third mission and a stressed Jeremy Renner hitting two, so she really does keep things from going stale.
Another switch is that aside from the supporting cast being teammates bonded by intensely stressful circumstances, Rogue Nation takes the next step of having Hunt now be incredibly emotionally invested in the well being of his team with Dunn especially shidting from comic relief to almost being a younger brother to Hunt which makes the palm moistenimg final act all the more nerve fraying. Stupifying, aforementioned plane-hanging aside (which comes and goes surprisingly quickly in the film) the remaining set pieces are, of course excellent, choosing to go down the more Hitchcockian style of M:1 as it piles on the complicated tension and cinematic trickery. A scene involving Hunt scrambling through an theatre’s back stages trying to stop an assassination only to find there are not one but three assassins all ordered to fire on the sound of a certain note is straight up, fucking sublime, a sequence of pure cinema set to Nessun Dorma (oh yes, THAT note) that is both unbearably tense and wonderfully exhilarating. Tense is a word that also applies to another set piece involving key cards, a database and a dick-load of water that amounts to Hunt having to test the durability of his lungs while swirling around a submerged computer processor that doubles as an anxiety sparking drown-nasium.
Any problems the film has are minor. Sean Harris’ breathy villain is slight (a continuing niggle the series has) and, thanks to some overly sinister, breathy dialogue, almost verges on self parody; also, some (not me) might gripe that the huge action downshifts to something far smaller by the end, but what Rogue Nation’s third act loses in scale, it makes up for it in raw, edge of the seat, cat and mouse games without a giant robot car park or spot of motorcycle jousting in sight – and all set to one of the greatest themes in pop culture history.
M:I 5 is undoubtedly yet another high point in a series where everyone seems to have a different favorite (which never seems to be M:I 2, sorry John Woo). Personally I still lean towards the dizzy glee of the Ghost Protocol, but don’t let that take away of the majesty of this film. Take note cinema, THIS is how you do a part 5. Light the fuse. Accept the mission. Watch the film.
🌟🌟🌟🌟
We Have Issues 
2 comments