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Tom Cruise is the Living Manifestation of Destiny in Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation |
Director: Christopher McQuarrie
Cast: Tom Cruise (Ethan Hunt), Jeremy Renner (William
Brandt), Simon Pegg (Benji Dunn), Rebecca Ferguson (Ilsa Faust), Ving Rhames
(Luther Stickell), Sean Harris (Solomon Lane), Alec Baldwin (Alan Hunley),
Simon McBurney (Atlee), Tom Hollander (Prime Minister)
Tom Cruise may be getting on a bit now, but he still does
his own stunts with reckless disregard for his own safety: part of the franchise’s
appeal is seeing the latest insane thing the Crusier will do. In M:I RN he gets this out of the way early
(pre-credits) with a madcap stunt involving holding onto a plane while it takes
off. A clever little tease, if for no other reason that no-one can complain
about it being a spoiler when said stunt was placed on the poster and all the
trailers, when it’s literally the first thing he does in the film.
Anyway, the mission accepted this time is Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise)
going toe-to-toe with a shadowy organisation known as The Syndicate (a sort of
evil IMF), run by the serenely sinister Solomon Lane (Sean Harris). Things are
made more difficult by IMF being disbanded (again!) by CIA director Alan Hunley
(Alec Baldwin). However, help is at hand from old friends Benji (Simon Pegg),
Brandt (Jeremy Renner) and Luther (Ving Rhames) – and possibly from mysterious
double (or is it triple?) agent Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) who may or may
not be playing for the angels.
This continues the rich vein of form for this series. It’s
light, fast-paced and huge amounts of fun that bombs along with plenty of cool
stuff happening all the time. Once again, the stunts are pretty stunning and
the set-pieces feel like they offer fresh alternatives. In fact Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation might
be one of the most fun entries in what’s already a hugely enjoyable franchise.
It’s still very much the Cruise franchise though. There’s a
fascinating documentary on the DVD. It’s called “Cruise Control”, which is a
revealing pun while you watch Tom constantly stand over the shoulder of Chris
McQuarrie during shooting. He sets the camera, he storyboards the scenes, he
talks to the actors, he edits the film. To all intents and purposes, he’s at
lease the co-director. Perhaps this is why Cruise is so overwhelmingly the
focus of the film. He spends a good 15 minutes displaying his chiselled body
topless. Alec Baldwin even has a ludicrous speech where he calls Hunt “the
living manifestation of destiny”. Fun as the film is, make no mistake it’s a
showpiece for Cruise.
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Here's Tom hanging off a plane. Say what you like the guy is committed. Or should be committed. |
Not that there is much wrong with that if the end result is such
good fun. Simon Pegg does a good job of puncturing the pretentions. Every 15 minutes
we also get some sort of gripping action set-piece: Tom fighting in the Vienna
Opera House, Tom holding his breath in an underwater computer bank for an
unfeasibly long period of time, Tom driving a car then a motorbike (no helmet!)
through a series of crazily risky chases… Even when escaping from captivity
early from the film, he springs his escape with a nifty upside-down acrobatic
jump-climb from a pole. Sure it’s all Tom, but he does it all so well that you
can’t not be entertained.
But away from Tom, there is actually a nice sense of family
that keeps the story bubbling over. Benji and Hunt increasingly feel like
heterosexual life partners (in a really nice touch, it’s Benji who fills the
damsel in distress role at the end of the film). The other returning
characters, Brandt and Luther, don’t have masses to do but immediately settle
into the bickering dynamic that keeps the family ticking over. Ilsa Faust is
thrown into this boys-only club partly as a femme fatale, partly as some sort
of a potential surrogate stepmum, who the kids are working out whether to
trust.
Ilsa Faust could be the best thing about the film, a sort of
super-efficient female version of Ethan, bests him a couple of times, and can
do all the running, punching, shooting and driving that Tom does almost as well. Sure the camera can’t
quite resist a few tracking shots up her body in a nice dress or motorcycle
gear, but all-in-all she’s pretty well presented. There is a curious
semi-flirtatious, semi-siblingy relationship between Faust and Hunt, with the
film eventually settling as a kinda sweet dance of “what might have been”.
Ferguson is terrific in the role, not only matching Tom’s athleticism, but also
giving Faust a sort of arch mysteriousness. Goodness only knows what Hunt
really makes of the first female interest he’s had in the series who can match
him.
McQuarrie may, I suspect, be as much Cruise’s collaborator
as the director, but he does craft an exciting and confident piece of film
making. The Syndicate plot line is suitably twisty and turny – and helped by
Sean Harris’ softly spoken, arrogant menace as Lane. You’ll be kept guessing as
to the true agenda of nearly everyone involved. Simon McBurney offers good
smarm as a shady MI6 head (called, bizarrely, Chief Attlee at every turn hardly
the title you’d expect). A spycraft action sequence at the Vienna Opera House
is a brilliantly entertaining routine of misdirection, which feels close in tone
to the original Mission: Impossible
film in its old-school smarts behind new-school flash.
Rogue Nation is,
quite simply, a damn entertaining thrill ride – and it doesn’t really have pretensions
to be more than that. McQuarrie and Cruise keep the action churning along
nicely, each of the thrilling set pieces is exactly that, and the core
characters on this rollercoaster are engaging and interesting. McQuarrie is a
skilled enough writer to rope together some memorable scenes among the mayhem.
It’s charming and hugely entertaining – any doubt that this franchise isn’t
here for the long term can be firmly dispelled.
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