Fifth in sequence and running at 131 minutes, what could Christopher Mc Quarrie’s Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation offer one that the others have not thus far?
Well, for beginners, visualize 53 year old Tom Cruise (the name’s same- Ethan Hunt) holding onto the closed door of a military plane ferrying poison gas taking off and his comrade-in-arm Benji (Simon Pegg) trying to get the damn door open. So what is so unusual about all this? Whew! It’s for real- no double, no CGI and at an altitude of a few thousand feet!
Well, that’s the impossible, which brings back fans over and over again into the theatres, needlessly to say raking in the moolah.
The hunt for Hunt is The Syndicate, which CIA Chief Alan Hunley (Alec Baldwin) believes is a figment of imagination created to justify the brash means of IMF (Impossible Missions Force) and in particular Hunt’s freehand in running the spy set-up according to his whim, backed by his Chief William Brandt (Jeremy Renner).
The CIA manage to get the IMF defunct, at least on paper, especially when Benji disappears from the grid to be located in Vienna seen along with Hunt; at the same theatre where the Austrian Chancellor is first shot at- a mere flesh wound and then is blown-up in his vehicle with his wife- the bonus.
Is Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) MI5? Or a double spy? Why does she choose to save Hunt? Is it because she would get a better opportunity to pop him off? Well, it’s like a status on FB: it’s complicated!
Don’t look for some great acting in Rogue Nation- it’s an action thriller man, not an English drama. Yet the scenes and action unfold in London and guess what the British Prime Minister is at stake- this time it’s big.
The Syndicate wants to strike at the very heart of the English Democracy and bring down the institution itself. Well, they do say that we create our own demons and it’s no surprise that the so-called terrorist gang has been a creation of the British Intelligence?
Rogue Nation is a thriller and plenty of adrenal pumps one up to sit through nail-biting sequences, in particular the underwater (gosh, what, it’s not ariel this time?) sequence to fiddle around the identities for Benji to get past the security guards and the gait-recognition programme.
Well, like Bollywood, Hunt must win, his team is tops and the mission is made possible- that’s in a nutshell MI for you.
But watch it if you’re a die-hard fan of Hunt, his team and MI. Should there be a 6? Well who knows- if the monies are great, if Cruise is still ravishing and if there is a younger woman his equal- then why not?
3/5