You know, Tom Cruise, you don’t need to jump out of a plane for us to like you. Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation puts its star through the ringer, forcing him to hold his breath underwater for a few minutes, ride a motorcycle next to the ground, and even jump out of a damn plane. What happened in the story you ask? WHO KNOWS? IT’S TOM CRUISE, and HE’S JUMPING OUT OF A PLANE!!!
That plane jump isn’t a spoiler as it happens 5 minutes in. The meat of the story centers around Ethan Hunt (Cruise) hunting down the mysterious organization called the Syndicate. After becoming briefly captured and rescued by the mysterious Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson), Hunt has to evade the Syndicate as well as his own Impossible Mission Force (IMF). William Brandt (Jeremy Renner) and the rest of the IMF is under assault from Alan Hunley (Alec Baldwin) and the rest of the government for their seemingly rogue behavior, exemplified by Ethan Hunt. On a worldwide chase from Vienna to Morocco to London, Hunt uses his two most trusted allies Luther (Ving Rhames) and Benji (Simon Pegg) to track down Faust who will hopefully lead the team to the mysterious Lane (Sean Harris) and the Syndicate.
After Scientology drove him slightly off the deep end, Cruise has been trying to win back the audience with fun or audacious roles. Tropic Thunder was hysterical. Oblivion was popcorny. And the last mission impossible had him scale a man made glass mountain. Cruise ups the ante hear via sea and air escapades, which give the sequences pop. However, some of the style is missing here than in other outings. Outside of a very elegant and funny sequence at the Vienna Opera House, most of the action would be super generic if Cruise wasn’t doing it. Cruise makes Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation more watchable than it has any right to be simply because he is the one performing these crazy feats of the human body.
Outside of Cruise, the franchise seems to be spinning its wheels but going nowhere. The plot is fine, but uninspired (the bad guys are not helping here), and the movie uses several cheats to push the story from one locale to another. You know plot twists are coming, but the choices made here have mostly been used by the series before. By the time the final sequence in London commences, the story had lost my interest and most of the audience’s in the theater I was in.
As stated above, Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation would be my submission to show how Tom Cruise is a BONA FIDE movie star. Cruise cannot help but command attention when he saunters onto the screen, and his physicality for this role is intimidatingly impressive with each new stunt or body contortion. He singlehandedly keeps the movie afloat. Rebecca Ferguson fares better than other MI women; she gets to kick ass a couple times and show here adeptness at knife fights and evening gowns. Simon Pegg clearly has the most fun here in his beefed up role, and he mostly does fine with it. Jeremy Renner and Alec Baldwin are relocated to some generic court room film until the 3rd act requires their presence. Rogue Nation’s biggest problem are its villains though. Sean Harris is chilling, but more like a stone and less like a killer. When he needs to be mad, Harris plays it super low key, and Simon McBurney is there for Rebecca Ferguson to have someone to fight with.
Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation is more of the same for the franchise. Down from the high (critics’ consensus, not mine) of the last film, Rogue Nation plays the “Tom Cruise, do what you do” card to solid but unspectacular effect. I mean come on, what the hell is Jeremy Renner doing in court? You put an Avenger on a witness stand for 2/3 of a film!