Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation is the latest installment in the wildly successful Mission Impossible series and sees Tom Cruise return again as the super-agent Ethan Hunt. Once again he is tasked with completing another "impossible" mission, and the ride is just as fun as we all hoped. Rogue Nation is filled to the brim with brilliant action sequences and thrilling stunts, and swiftly weaves together a story balanced with both light humor and stressful moments of peril. Hunt is aided by his crack team of loyal agents on a mission to prove the existence of a crime syndicate, capable of geopolitical terrorism and espionage. With the entire IMF disbanded, Hunt must take down the syndicate while also avoiding capture from the CIA, who consider him a fugitive and consider his heroics instances of extreme luck and recklessness.
Simon Pegg co-stars as Benji, the tech expert, and Ving Rhames and Jeremy Renner reprise their roles as Luther Stickell and William Brandt. A new addition to the team sees Rebecca Ferguson play Ilsa Faust, a double agent who helps Ethan and infiltrates the Syndicate, while being an MI6 agent. So I guess that would make her a triple agent... Ferguson's character is very interesting, the audience doesn't know whether to trust her or not and she is very convincing in her playing of both sides. Simon Pegg is hilarious and benefits from a larger spotlight in this latest installment, Jeremy Renner's character is less vital to the plot but still is an interesting character and a valuable member to the team, but it is Ferguson who really shines. Her performance is right on the money and her vulnerability contrasted with her bad-ass nature makes her a compelling character, and a welcome addition to the franchise. Tom Cruise proves once again that he is his generation's defining action star, and continues to anchor the exhilarating series. Cruise performs a large amount of his own stunts, which not only allows for smoother camera work and less cuts trying to hide the stuntman, but also makes the movie just that much cooler, knowing that the lead actor is actually risking is life to some degree and not just acting.
Such is the case in the movie's opening scene, where Hunt must hang onto the side of a plane in flight. Rogue Nation has some of the best action sequences of the entire Mission Impossible franchise. The previous movie may have set the bar with Cruise scaling the Burj Dubai, but some of Rogue Nation's action scenes do not fall far behind. This movie mights perhaps contain the best motorcycle chase scene of all time, as well as an incredibly daring underwater heist, and loads of well choreographed fight scenes. With snappy dialogue and thrilling action, Rogue Nation is almost everything you could ask for in a fun summer-blockbuster, but like most movies, it isn't perfect. This franchise has had trouble with creating a menacing villain, except Philip Seymour Hoffman in M-I-III, to fight Ethan Hunt, and this year it was no different. The leader of the Syndicate is a small mouse-looking man with a voice that is not scary, but actually really annoying. He isn't remotely menacing and is barely understandable, but luckily he is the films only real weakness.
A-