Film review – Mission Impossible Rogue Nation
My notes on the franchise flick.
Every time one of these comes out, I find myself uttering the same complaint – yes, all very well, but how about a Mission: Imposssible film in which the IMF are given an impossible mission and then carry it out. Yet again, this flirts with Bruce Geller’s format only to go off-book quickly and pile an undeeded extra layer of impossibility on the team by forcing them to carry out various heists and scams while on the run from their own side and improvising with whatever comes to hand. Yet again, thanks to the mix of a decent plot (supplied by director Christopher McQuarrie) and outstanding action/stunt sequences, the result is solidly entertaining … though quibbles arise from the way all three of star Tom Cruise’s back-up men (Jeremy Renner, Ving Rhames and Simon Pegg as characters with names that still haven’t registered) are mostly comedy relief … the fact that the cynical vision of international espionage (here, it turns out that British Intelligence has created an Evil IMF as an exercise and are surprised to find it’s gone rogue and is making trouble) is so weightless and fantastical, even when compared with the Bourne or Jack Ryan films. The spell of the IM format depends on not asking the questions a politician (Alec Baldwin) asks in an opening hearing about the illegal, unconsititutional, high-handed, unethical and dangerous methods our fantasy heroes deploy to pull off their capers. It’s mentioned that the IMF have been around for 40 years, though the fact that the TV show’s hero was rebooted as a villain in the first of the film series sours the continuity somewhat – and there’s no sense that ‘the Syndicate’, the shadowy evil organisation taken down here, are related to the euphemism-for-the-mafia Syndicate of later seasons of the show (and even the theatrical fix-up Mission Impossible vs the Mob).
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