“Benji, open the door!” yells Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) into his headset as he desperately clings to the left outside rear door of a cargo plane as it’s taking off. “Yeah, I’m trying!” replies tech genius Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg). “Benji, open that door right now!” demands William Brandt (Jeremy Renner), observing the operation back at base. When the plane’s large rear cargo door opens as the plane reaches 5,000 feet, Ethan yells to Benji, “Open the OTHER door!” in the exciting opening sequence of the fifth installment in the action series, Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation.
It’s dark times for the IMF as Ethan and his team find themselves under attack from the CIA’s director Alan Hunley (Alec Baldwin), who, unfortunately, is successful in having Congress disband the IMF, leaving Hunt out in the cold. All of this happens while Hunt is following his only lead on the Syndicate, a network of spies, mercenaries, and other highly trained operatives bent on creating chaos and a new world order through a series of terrorist attacks.
Being in over his head and seeing no other options, Ethan reaches out to his old IMF buddies Simon (who now works as a code breaker for the CIA when he’s not playing video games at his workstation), Brandt (who’s become Hunley’s assistant), and Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames) who went off the grid after the IMF was disbanded. Ethan pulls them back together, reluctantly, as a team to try to bring down the Syndicate. They have only one ally: a disavowed British spy named Isla Faust (Rebecca Ferguson), who may or may not be a member of the Anti-IMF.
Exhilarating, suspenseful, funny, and action-packed, Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation IS the best action film of the summer and the best film yet in the franchise. MI5 has jaw-dropping stunts and fantastic action scenes, which will undoubtedly shock and thrill movie audiences. The opening sequence with Cruise’s character running for the cargo plane and hanging on to its side as the plane lifts off and reaches 5,000 feet is perhaps the most impressive stunt work – done by Tom Cruise himself, by the way – and action scene since the plane hijacking/crashing scene in The Dark Knight Rises.
Tom Cruise is perfect as Ethan Hunt, the leader of the IMF team. He owns the role, and it’s impossible to imagine anyone else playing the character. Hunt is still cocky and insistent on always doing things his way, but now that he’s older, he realizes he can’t do everything himself and needs his IMF buddies to even hope to get the job done. At age 53 (though he doesn’t look it), Cruise proves once again he is up to the incredible task of performing his own amazing stunts.
Simon Pegg provides much-needed comic relief as Benji, the computer expert of the group, who thankfully gets more screen time with Cruise in this film. They have great chemistry, and the car chase scene a little more than halfway through the film featuring Cruise and Pegg in the car together is both thrilling and hilarious.
Ving Rhames doesn’t get quite as much screen time as he did in past films, nor does Jeremy Renner returning for his second MI outing with this fifth film of the series, but both are still solid in their roles. In fact, when the two get paired together to try to find Ethan and Benji before the CIA does, it leads to some very witty banter about automobile choices during high-speed chases.
The writing, pacing, and direction of Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation is the strongest it’s ever been in the series, with just the right mixture of action and tongue-in-cheek humor. The entire cast clicks and has wonderful chemistry together.
The only minor drawback to the film is the fact that the plot centering on the IMF team going up against a rogue spy network which was responsible for Ethan getting left out in the cold seems way to similar to the main plot of the popular former USA network spy series Burn Notice.
With extraordinary action scenes, breathtaking stunts, a great cast, a strong soundtrack, and plenty of humor, Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation has everything a movie fan could want from a big action summer spectacle.
GRADE: A-
Written and Directed By: Christopher McQuarrie
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for sequences of action and violence, and brief partial nudity
Running Time: 131 minutes
