The Case for More MIssions

Hard to believe the Mission Impossible franchise has been going for 20 years.  And now, Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, the fifth film in the series, is bringing the awesome music and high powered secret spy action back to the big screen.

The music is still awesome; the film itself, a little lesser than its predecessor.

There are still amazing set pieces, incredible action and exotic locations, but the overall heart of the film seemed to be missing.

Its not Simon Pegg’s fault.  As much as his character is the screaming “damsel in distress”, he brings a lot of the humour and “grounding” of the film to a more human level.  Around him, there are government big wigs and super soldiers and lots of incidental individuals, none of whom are particularly three dimensional or seem to be fazed by what is going on about them.

King of the stony faced people is Tom Cruise, back as Ethan Hunt, and as bullet proof and unstoppable as ever.  They are barely pretending these days that Hunt is human, his only physical flaw being a susceptibility to the need to breathe, though even then, he has super powers meaning he can last a lot longer than ordinary men and women.  I think he cracked a smile perhaps once, but for a character who is on the screen most of the movie, I am struggling to recall any real dialogue he shared with any other characters.  

Not that there needs to be much in the way of conversation: Hunt is tracking down the mysterious Rogue Nation of spies, out doing nefarious things around the world, though only Hunt is aware of them and only Hunt can bring them down.  He seems to get a helping hand though in the beautiful form of an agent within the Rogue Nation who seems to be assisting him – but can she really be trusted?

Lots of exotic locales and chases and product placement for Nokia phones and BMWs and watches the characters don’t actually seem to be wearing ensues.  

And its all really entertaining, ably assisted by that fantastic theme music.  There are moments when I was looking at my own time piece, mainly when some of my fellow film goers kept asking silly questions about how Hunt survived his last trick (just run with it!) or took out their cell phones (!) to text someone, but for the most part the excitement and action keep things moving along.  It probably is a bit too long at 2 hours plus, but when things did slow down a little, it was only a few minutes before some insane action set piece came along to liven things up again.

Verdict: Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation is a fairly passable action movie, though to be honest, there is not much in there that raises it above a middling film.  Do I want more?  Sure – as long as that theme song is featured prominently, I will be wishing Jim good luck and disavowing any knowledge of the Impossible Missions Force. 7 missions out of 10.