‘Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation’ Review: Bigger and better

Ethan Hunt, according to the high-level bureaucrat Alec Baldwin plays with such infectious irony, is “the living manifestation of destiny.”

In a way, Baldwin’s quote also feels like an appropriate description about the Mission: Impossible fiilm franchise. The films all seem to be just a series of outrageous stunts and death-defying acts where all the heroes miraculously survive in a fashion that makes it feel like their successes in their various missions fated. They are expensively bombastic documents of how indefatigable destiny is even in the midst of the most potent of dangers.

[Mild spoilers follow.]

 

Take Rogue Nation’s various implausible escapes, for example. Ethan, chained and tortured by his sadistic captors, is miraculously aided by a woman. She distracts all the thugs in the secured chamber so that Ethan can scurry his way to safety. In another scene, Ethan drowns before he could open the hatch that will ensure his survival. The woman, again, fortuitously rescues Ethan from certain death. 

Sure, the films’ array of missions is impossible to accomplish, but with just the right amount of filmmaker’s caprice, they can be fulfilled. This has always been Mission: Impossible’s boon and bane. The films, while always exciting and spectacular in how it pits its prized hero against all sorts of mental, physical and emotional challenges, will never shock or surprise. All the machinations, convolutions, and inventions lead to one thing – to put Ethan, and Tom Cruise, up on a pedestal. 

To catch a thief 

Despite that, each of the Mission: Impossible films is a shining example of the type of entertainment Hollywood is most capable of creating. They are all guiltless romps that favor viewers who are either there just for erstwhile thrills or are there for something more.

The films have always followed the trajectory of one-upping the previous one in terms of scope and pageantry, and Rogue Nation, directed by Christopher McQuarrie, opens with what could be the series’ most outrageous stunt, involving Cruise hanging from a flying airplane. (WATCH: How Tom Cruise did his ‘Mission: Impossible’ airplane stunt)

The stunt however is more than just an effect, it also appears to be a nod to Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest, whose most famous scene involves Cary Grant being chased by a rampaging crop duster. This isn’t accidental. Ever since Brian de Palma helmed the first Mission: Impossible film, the series has always borrowed from Hitchcock in both style and story.

Rogue Nation is simply more brazen about it, stealing the locales and the famous concert hall sequence of The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), the spellbinding romance of Notorious (1946), and the spy versus spy adventurism of other Hitchcock features to benefit its attempt to pass off its fascinating ludicrousness as populist art. It works. It actually works well. McQuarrie is smart enough to wrap the film’s indulgent narrative twists and turns within a formula that has provided Hitchcock’s films with the leeway for clever storytelling.

Secret agent

Ethan is the classic Hitchcock lead, framed for a certain wrongdoing and traveling the world to uncover a conspiracy involving a secret group with evil plans for the world. 

The IMF has been suspended by the CIA because its procedures are far too risky and unpredictable, turning Ethan, who has just been captured by the mysterious Syndicate, into a fugitive in hiding. Ethan, left with just himself and a couple of loyal friends, has to jump from one city to another to take down the Syndicate, whose leader (Sean Harris) is as cunning as him, but with all the ruthlessness he can never muster. 

Rogue Nation has Cruise at its core and center. The rest of the gang, from Simon Pegg to Jeremy Renner, is there to ensure that Cruise and the character he plays are well-rounded, humorous in his reactions and retorts to Pegg’s witty Benji Dunn, and daringly rebellious to Renner’s flimsily authoritative William Brandt.

Rebecca Ferguson, who plays enigmatic double agent Ilsa Faust, fascinates with her sly gestures, which in turn, put Cruise in a place where his character feels awkwardly out of control.

Easy virtue 

McQuarrie is a competent enough director to make sure that Rogue Nation does not end up becoming more ambitious than it can actually manage. The film is taut and tense despite all the complications its narrative has to go through to arrive at its nicely wrapped conclusion.

Its grand action sequences are all astounding, with Cruise easily muscling through feats despite his age. There is enough to chew in the film to forgive its many meanderings.

The film’s easiest virtue is its allegiance to the franchise. The Mission: Impossible films have strayed far enough from the television series that spawned it, morphing into some sort of vanity project for Cruise, except that it is also smart and frenzied as it oddly romanticizes renegade spies. Rogue Nation showcases Cruise as a true action star, a modern-day Cary Grant whose gentlemanly charms are abandoned for superhuman brawn. – Rappler.com

Francis Joseph Cruz litigates for a living and writes about cinema for fun. The first Filipino movie he saw in the theaters was Carlo J. Caparas’ ‘Tirad Pass.’ Since then, he’s been on a mission to find better memories with Philippine cinema. Profile photo by Fatcat Studios