Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation

It's hard to believe that the Mission Impossible film series is nineteen years old this year. The first film came out in the summer of 1996 and every few years we'll get a new installment, each just a little (or in the case of the second film, a lot) different. But one thing has become abundantly clear. From the third film on, they somehow just keep getting better and better and Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation manages to be just as good as the third and fourth films. 

This film picks up more or less where the fourth film, Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, left off with the director of the CIA Alan Hunley (played by Alec Baldwin), is calling for the IMF agency to be closed down, while William Brandt (played by Jeremy Renner) is trying to explain the good the agency does. Ultimately, Brandt loses and the IMF is shut down. Brandt is asked to help locate Ethan Hunt (played by Tom Cruise) and bring him in. Meanwhile, Ethan is on his own undercover in England when he uncovers evidence that a terrorist group known only as the Syndicate exists. Before he can get away, he's captured by The Syndicate so they can find out what he knows about them, by means of torture, of course. Before they can get started, Ethan is rescued by Ilsa Faust (played by Rebecca Ferguson), a deep cover British Intelligence agent within the Syndicate. She makes it look like Ethan overpowered her and the others in the room and shows him how to get out. When Ethan manages to escape, he calls for an extraction, only to find out IMF is shut down and he's on his own. 

Six months later, former IMF tech and field agent Benji Dunn (played by Simon Pegg), now working for the CIA, is contacted by Ethan, who has finally tracked down the Syndicate and needs Benji's help in preventing their next attack, on the Chancellor of Vienna at an opera performance. He needs Benji to help scan the crowd and locate the suspected Syndicate ringleader that Ethan caught a glimpse of and was able to create a sketch of. With another run in with Ilsa, along with a couple other assassins there to take out the Chancellor, Ethan and Benji discover what The Syndicate really is, an independent organization creating terrorist attacks and large scale "accidents" to manipulate world politics as they see fit. Recruiting their former IMF buddies Luther Stickell (played by Ving Rhames) and William Brandt, they set out to take down this organization once and for all. 

Somehow, these movies keep managing to top the last one in terms of action set pieces, with a couple genuinely hair-raising ones this time out as well, including having Tom Cruise clinging to the side of a cargo plane as it takes off to retrieve a shipment of nerve gas or a fantastically executed car and motorcycle chase scene through Casablanca and the surrounding freeways and mountain roads. Christopher McQuarrie takes up the directing reins this time out and gives the film a classic espionage movie flavor that really added to the film.  He also wrote the script along Drew Pierce and provided the film with enough twists and turns that I would expect from someone who gave us The Usual Suspects. 

Cruise does another good job in a role he has played well four times previously. It was nice to see Ving Rhames back in a major role in the series after pretty much sitting out the fourth film. For me, the film's MVP though is Simon Pegg as Benji, who functions at times as the comic relief, but is also clearly a competent agent as well. He is allowed to be a bit goofy, without being annoying, but is also lovable. I may be biased here as a Simon Pegg fan, but he's my favorite character in the series and I love that they keep bringing him back. There is an entire section of the film where it's just Benji and Ethan operating alone and those were some of my favorite bits of the movie. Rebecca Ferguson is fantastic as Ilsa and makes her such an intriguing and mysterious character. She is seriously badass and can hold her own with Ethan, but yet you're never entirely sure which side she is on, which only adds tension to the film. Alec Baldwin was a nice addition to the mix here as well, especially as someone who remembers his turn as CIA analyst Jack Ryan in The Hunt for Red October, and I chuckled a little when he showed up. He's a bit of an antagonist this time around, as his character doesn't believe the Syndicate is real and wants Ethan in custody. 

One weak point with the Mission Impossible series has always been it's villains. The best they've had has probably been Phillip Seymour Hoffman in the third film, who was genuinely threatening and intense. However, they give us a good one this time around with Solomon Lane (played by Sean Harris) as the head of The Syndicate. He's a real nasty customer as someone who will stop at nothing for his plans to go into effect. He is certainly a worthy adversary for Ethan and his team to face off with and a lot of the suspense comes from how are they going to manage to stop not only him, but his huge network of terrorists. The nice thing about this movie, much like Ghost Protocol, is that it focuses on the team as a whole and is not just the Ethan Hunt show. Each team member has their all too important role to fill in order for the mission to succeed. 

Overall, Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation is another fantastic entry into a series that seems to be just getting better and better as it goes along. As long as they're as good as this one, if Tom and company want to keep making them, I'll be happy to keep going. Especially if Simon Pegg is in it.