Mis­sion: Impos­si­ble – Rogue Nation

“We must move for­ward, not back­ward; upward, not for­ward; and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards free­dom!” These words are spo­ken by a slaver­ing ten­ta­cled alien named Kodos – dis­guised as for­mer US Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton – dur­ing a bewil­der­ing pub­lic address in the 1996 Tree­house of Hor­ror VII episode of The Simp­sons, though they could just as eas­i­ly be the modus operan­di of the Impos­si­ble Mis­sions Force and its ever­green top asset, Ethan Hunt.

In addi­tion to doing a lot of twirling (some­times upward, some­times for­ward) Tom Cruise leaps, dives, punch­es, rap­pels and – nat­u­ral­ly – sprints his way through 131 breath­less min­utes of Mis­sion: Impos­si­ble – Rogue Nation, under­lin­ing his com­mit­ment to deliv­er­ing authen­tic action in an age of soul­less CG-every­thing block­buster cin­e­ma. For a fran­chise which has always oper­at­ed accord­ing to an encrypt­ed inter­nal log­ic designed to keep the view­er at arm’s length, it’s telling that Cruise’s hyper­ki­net­ic cen­tral per­for­mance once again pro­vides the focal point around which every aux­il­iary com­po­nent – from the stan­dard issue plot to bland allies to an even bland­er bad­die – orbits. An over-reliance on Cruise as the sin­gle ground­ing force has proven both a key sell­ing point and a major short­com­ing down the years. Nev­er has this para­dox been more evi­dent than in this inter­mit­tent­ly enter­tain­ing, unex­cep­tion­al fifth instalment.

It’s not that after 20 years, five direc­tors and as many mis­sions these films have noth­ing new to offer – an open­ing air­field set-piece which sees Cruise cling to the side of a mil­i­tary car­go plane dur­ing take­off is one of the most impres­sive in-cam­era stunts in mem­o­ry – but in this instance writer/​director Christo­pher McQuar­rie fails to resolve the iden­ti­ty cri­sis from which Brad Bird’s 2011 entry, Ghost Pro­to­col, suf­fered. McQuar­rie invites us to judge his film next to oth­er high-octane mod­ern action­ers, but it’s hard to com­pare it to any­thing oth­er than pre­vi­ous Mis­sion: Impos­si­ble films. That’s not to accuse Rogue Nation of being over­ly deriv­a­tive or void of big ideas, more to say that it spends too long pay­ing lip ser­vice to its own lega­cy with­out show­ing the kind of gen­uine ambi­tion that might enable the fran­chise to evolve.

That famil­iar lit fuse from the open­ing cred­its may still fiz­zle with the same white hot inten­si­ty, but else­where the spark has been lost. Every­thing from Joe Kraemer’s lousy rehash of Lalo Schifrin’s orig­i­nal score to the irk­some ros­ter of recur­ring sup­port­ing char­ac­ters that includes Simon Pegg’s 00-dork, Ben­ji, and Jere­my Renner’s charm­less ana­lyst, Brandt (both of whom you’ll recog­nise with­out remem­ber­ing what they did last time out to mer­it earn­ing a call back) makes Rogue Nation seem decid­ed­ly sec­ond-rate. With one excep­tion: the Cruiser.

To call Cruise the film’s MVP would sug­gest there are oth­ers wor­thy of con­sid­er­a­tion. In truth Pegg and Ren­ner – not for­get­ting Alec Bald­win and Ving Rhames, who inci­den­tal­ly is the only actor oth­er than Cruise to have appeared in all five M:I movies – aren’t in the same league (hell, they’re not even play­ing the same sport). To that end Rebec­ca Fer­gu­son does a decent job as the seduc­tive dou­ble agent with ties to the Syn­di­cate, a sin­is­ter ter­ror­ist net­work which Hunt and his decom­mis­sioned IMF cronies attempt to take down, though aside from a high-speed motor­cy­cle chase through the back­streets of Casablan­ca and a knife fight in a Lon­don mau­soleum, even her per­for­mance feels odd­ly out of sync.

Like its pre­de­ces­sors, Rogue Nation has been pre­ci­sion-tooled to show­case the tal­ents of its resilient lead star. On those terms it should be hailed as an emphat­ic suc­cess. Watch­ing the spec­ta­cle unfold, how­ev­er, you’re struck with the sober­ing real­i­sa­tion that there is only so long Cruise can con­tin­ue run­ning, only so much he can keep twirling, twirling, twirling. Because the hi-tech gad­gets, the super­bikes, the insane stunt­work, all that cool stuff adds up to a poor sub­sti­tute for a good sto­ry. All of which begs the ques­tion: where does the fran­chise go from here?

Since 1996 Cruise has appeared in rough­ly one M:I movie every four to five years. Unless the pat­tern is bro­ken (ear­ly days, per­haps, but there’s noth­ing to sug­gest it will be) that means he’ll be 57 by the time M:I 6 comes around. Hav­ing free climbed 2,000ft canyons in Col­orado, scaled the world’s tallest build­ing and now soared 5,000ft above the Eng­lish coun­try­side in a suit and tie, Cruise has noth­ing left to prove. That’s nev­er stopped him before, but the real­i­ty is that at best Rogue Nation feels like a last hur­rah, not a rad­i­cal depar­ture or a return to form. On that note it will be fas­ci­nat­ing to see whether Cruise choos­es to accept anoth­er mission.