Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt is described by his boss, played by Alec Baldwin, as “the living manifestation of destiny” in Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation. Tom Cruise seems like an unusually lightweight agent of destiny. But he and his director Christopher McQuarrie (of The Usual Suspects, as well as several unpopular Cruise vehicles) have the right respect toward the principle that an action movie hero should never falter in revealing character through action. They stick as close to that principle—that Hunt is a confident, forward-moving man–as Joe Kraemer’s soundtrack sticks to Lalo Schifrin’s deathless theme music. And Kraemer sticks as close to Schifrin as David Arnold sticks to John Barry.
With disavowal on one side and betrayal on the other, Hunt and what’s left of the Impossible Mission Force seek a highly untrustworthy lady secret agent, Ilsa Faust. (As played by the Swedish actress Rebecca Ferguson, Faust almost deserves a series of her own). Hunt first encounters Faust while being trussed up like St. Sebastian. While trying to find Faust and what she knows, Hunt is helped by his steady friend Benji (Simon Pegg), computer expert and comedy relief. (Benji grouses: “Join the IMF and see the world. Through a monitor. In a closet.”)
The IMF’s ultimate target, which is not a rogue nation, is instead a SPECTRE-like crime organization run by a frowning intelligencer named Lane (Sean Harris). Harris’ credits show him as the kind of protean actor it takes some time to notice, since he doesn’t repeat himself much. But he hasn’t been this particularly frightening since he was the head thug in the Michael Caine movie Harry Brown. Manifesting evil through slightly pointed ears, menacing spectacles and a black turtleneck, he looks like a composite: there’s a resemblance to Sterling Hayden in the mad eyes and Eli Wallach in the rodent chin. Harris has a sense of malignancy that never fails. One of his final misdeeds: using contact-lens camera and earphone, he turns a hostage into his personal ventriloquist dummy
The action never stops in this, the pinnacle of the series—not that MI:RN is a relentless and wearying movie, but there’s a strong tempo even in moments of rest and exposition. And there’s satisfying use of space alternating with the action, such as Ferguson’s slow first close up through the hole in a Chinese wooden screen. A chase that begins in tight old-world alleys ends at high speed on a freeway through the wide Morocco desert. This race on motorcycles is of supreme wickedness and excitement, with Hunt leaning into his ride so that his knees are almost ground by the asphalt. MI:RN insists that spying is an activity that requires tuxes and milling around torchlit British monuments in London. A similarly lavish-looking sequence concerns Hunt thwarting assassins at the Vienna opera. “Turandot” is on the bill, with sinister figures masked as the Chinese emperor’s court, and the big backstage sets flying by dangerously as they’re swung into place. The Syndicate prepares to strike during a long-held note in “Nessun Dorma”—this, the film’s most obvious steal is from Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much.
Some great care seems to have been paid to the images: during a morning scene, there’s as ravishing a shot of the Houses of Parliament as I’ve ever seen in a movie. The colors even look matched on a flock of African sheep. So much of the plot depends on detection and so little on CG or the gimmick of the rubber masks. In subtext, it’s a “getting the band back together” movie, with longtime co-stars Jeremy Renner and Ving Rhames coming to the rescue of the rogue Hunt.
McQuarrie’s right down the middle feelings about the politics of spying are civilized, rather than wishy-washy—his idea is that black ops are both cause and solution to problems. Hunt is described as “an arsonist playing fireman” which isn’t an unfair description of the spying community. Lane’s own underestimation of Hunt: our hero is “a gambler”. An excellent metaphor for this hazardous game, which matches not only 007’s own recreations, but goes back all the way to describe the career of the omniscient Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler.
Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation
PG-13; 131 Mins.
