Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation - Danny's Review

This is the fifth film in the series. I didn't really want to see it but nothing else started at the right time. I think for a blockbuster like this to be worthwhile, it has to be really good. It's not like some arthouse film you might find crushingly boring at the time then think of a week later; a Mission Impossible film is about instant gratification. It's got to be thrilling at the time. And this was not.

In the very first scene Ethan Hunt is hanging on to a plane, and his irritating sidekick Benji (Simon Pegg) is fumbling about trying to open the door. His slapstick efforts reassure the audience that there's no real danger here, and it's just a bit of fun. When Hunt does board the plane he finds some missiles and jumps off the plane with them. This scene has little bearing on the rest of the film, but it's justified as being part of a general plan for the evil boss to spread mischief and mayhem, which he continues to do. As far as I could tell, by the end we still don't know why he was doing this.

There's two standout action scenes. One is at the opera, where no fewer than four shooters are aiming at the Austrian Prime Minister. The other where the team rob a bank with Hunt diving into an water vault to change a security card. It's an exciting sequence, but you have to question the design of the bank. What do they do when they legitimately want to change the security cards, send down a diver? They are robbing the bank on behalf of the villain who it seems couldn't rob it himself; he needed the IMF (Impossible Mission Force) to do it for him.

So a couple of good bits, and Cruise is certainly a watchable star, but overall it does not hang together well. It's disjointed, with action scenes that don't move the story forwards then a burst of explanation. The chase scenes are dull. At least let's have Tom Cruise running really fast, like he does through the desert in MI:4. Another weak point is Ving Rhames, who pops up looking very much like a man with a contract to appear in all Mission Impossible films. Apparently this one had a lot of Chinese financing, which explains the extensive touristy scenes in London, including one shot featuring no fewer than six red phone boxes. There's also a Chinese name high up in the credits who does not appear at all in the film, presumably she was only in the version released in Asia to boost the appeal to that market.