MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - ROGUE NATION (Christopher McQuarrie 2015)

[Chris Knipp]

Christopher McQuarrie's MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - ROGUE NATION (2015)


REBECCA FERGUSON IN MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - ROGUE NATION

Breathless at five

Some action franchises are better or more memorable than others. For me the great favorite of the past fifteen years has been the Bourne movies, the first three, starring the essential Jason Bourne, Matt Damon, before the excellent but drab Jeremy Renner replaced him in number four and things turned soggy. I hope Damon comes back for one more, as has been promised since late last year. But Mission: Impossible means Tom Cruise, and it's clear that no matter how weird he goes in his private or scientological life, this is a star who remains a star and never goes soggy, even now at 53. Nor is there anything that has gone wrong with the series, under different directors, Brian De Palma, John Woo, JJ Abrams, Brad Bird, before the new one. Maybe it's only because it was last time, but my memory of a fight through two vast glass skyscrapers in the desert under Brad Bird's baton senns like as strong as any flashy, expensive action set piece could be.

What's new in Impossible5? Not as much, I fear, and those who say this is the weakest so far may be right (I'll have to trust those who actually remember them all). Standards have nonetheless been maintained. The onscreen image quality is lush: one can luxuriate in the rich hues; it's a gorgeous film to look at. There is one big action set piece after another, not, unfortunately connected by the feeling that they follow some essential narrative progression: they're fairly interchangeable. One has Cruise swimming around under water for far longer than he really has the breath for. He is unlocking some devices that will free Simon Pegg to get hold of something. (It's all quite complicated and hi-tech, but this aspect is relatively downplayed this time.)

These and other sequences get a shot in the arm by the involvement of a new actress, Rebecca Ferguson, who's Swedish but sports a fair English accent when needed. She can also do convincing action combat scenes, is beautiful, and looks great in a bikini. And she can leap astride men from behind and do them in. She ambiguously semi-rescues Cruise from prospective torture and maiming early on. Compared to her, Alex Baldwin (less flashy than usually) and Jeremy Renner (as drab as ever) don't leave much of an impression. Ving Rhames adds hip to the crew, but this isn't Pulp Fiction. There's a scene in the Vienna State Opera where they're performing Turanndot, Puccini with a Chinese setting, focusing on the most famous aria, "Nessun dorma," with Tom, Simon, and Rebecca placed around in the rafters while the Austrian chancellor barely escapes assassination. Not as tense somehow as Tom's trouble under water, but some have called this the best use of opera ever in a film, and the music is magnificently handled.

This time there has been a generous infusion of Chinese money from the organization Alibaba, which seems to explain not only Turandot but the nostalgic Harry Potter-style London sequences. Simon Pegg, known for English comedies like Shaun of the Dead, plays it straighter this time. He does this quite successfully, but his nondescript English face doesn't differ enough from the mug of Sean Harris, who plays the piece's arch villain. A flatness and confusion also pervades the fairly generic MI plot: in this franchise some nation is always going rogue and the band of ace spies is always under threat, and we get a pretty vague, standard-issue version of that here. We're not meant to be sure which side Roberta Ferguson's character is on, and she may not be quite sure either. There isn't The Big Sleep's level of plot confusion -- it's nowhere near that complicated, for one thing -- but things aren't clear enough to care deeply about, plot-wise. The images onscreen still look beautiful, and so does Rebecca, and Tom still exudes star quality -- and does most of his own dangerous stunts, including riding a motorcycle like a madman. The most memorable of Tom's displays of physical risk comes in the opening sequence when he'sis clinging to the outside door of an airplane as it heads into the sky. What happens as the end of the movie is less memorable.

Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation, 131 mins., rolled out with debuts in Vienna (23 July 2015), London (25 July) and New York (27 July). UK 30 July; many other countries in July and August, China 8 September.