I just saw the latest installment of Tom Cruise’s ATM machine, Mission Impossible Rogue Nation.
This review is going to wander a bit, partially because I’ve been thinking about a number
of things in relation to Tom Cruise the past couple of days, having binge watched the Mission
Impossible movies before seeing the new one. But mainly because I neglected to write down
any notes until about 24 hours after seeing Rogue Nation and as a result, don’t have
much to say about it. If you can imagine how it’s possible that 24 hours is enough time
to completely vaporize most thoughts about any piece of entertainment then you’re probably
halfway to guessing my feelings about Mission Impossible Rogue Nation.
I’ve always been a Tom Cruise apologist. He’s certainly a polarizing figure. Among
my friends people either love his movies or hate him. I think most people were on the
what-a-weirdo train when he climbed Oprah’s couch. A month later he appeared on Matt Lauer
and scared the pants off of everyone. My friends who liked his movies kind of backed out of
the room slowly and my friends who always hated him said, see I told you so. I was a
little disappointed. I could care less about celebrity lives and the movie he was promoting
when he went all banana pants, War of the Worlds was pretty good.
I've never had a problem drawing a line between art and the artist. Crimes and Misdemeanors is one of my favorite movies.
Annie Hall was the blueprint for the modern romantic comedy. And yet Woody Allen married
the adopted daughter of his girlfriend who was 35 years younger than him, which, while
not a crime seems pretty weird. Mad Max, Martin Riggs, and William Wallace weren’t anti-semitic
alcoholics. Maybe some lines are fuzzy though. Do we all hate Jello Pudding and the Cosby
show now? I’m unclear where we stand on that.
The Mission Impossible series really has no personality of its own and so it tends to
take on the style and characteristics of its director. There was the psychological thriller
one directed by Brian De Palma. There was the why is this movie so frickin tense one
directed by J J Abrams. There was the you know, this movie is surprisingly funny and
charming one directed by Brad Bird. And there was the zoom heavy, side slidy while shooting
a gun in slow motion one directed by John Woo. But you know, as long as you have a director
with a strong vision things seem to turn out ok. Mix in a memorable action sequence or
two and I’ve found that 3 out of the 4 Mission Impossible movies have fallen on the entertaining
side of the bell curve.
Which is why it’s puzzling that for Rogue Nation they went with Christopher McQuarrie
as director. A man with 2 previous directing credits to his name, the poorly received Jack
Reacher and a movie called The Way of the Gun that he directed 15 years ago. McQuarrie
with an equally underwhelming writing history also penned the script. The exception to his
writing history being Edge of Tomorrow but that movie had a cadre of 4 writers.
Rogue Nation is the most forgettable entry in the series. It isn’t stupid enough to
be bad but it lacks nearly any redeeming quality to stick in the brain. The advertisements
and media blitz are focusing heavily on the practical stunts and yes, after a summer of
CGI it is incredibly refreshing to watch an action sequence and know that at least some
percentage of what I’m looking at on screen wasn’t generated by a computer. However
I didn’t find any of the action sequences as memorable as the previous ones in the series
and regardless, at some point when the motorcycles stop and the planes land, the actors have
to open their mouths. And without a capable conductor it felt like
all the instruments in the orchestra were out of sync or even playing different music.
The highlight of the movie was Simon Pegg. Pegg was simultaneously the most impassioned,
dramatic, and hilarious actor in the entire movie. He was the only one who seemed genuinely
excited to be onscreen.
The movie lacks a compelling villain as well. I guess he’s mostly supposed to be scary
because he’s...weird? Look at his weird glasses and his weird face. So weeeeird. While
that might have made the drama more compelling I’m not going to hold that against it. The
only compelling villain in the series was Phillip Seymour Hoffman in number three who
was absolutely electric and made that my favorite entry.
Another problem is that Tom Cruise isn’t that strong an actor. He’s the definitive
movie star. Other than a handful of standout performances
Tom Cruise usually plays the same character, his onscreen persona. He’s just really good
at picking roles that are written for that onscreen persona. A sly grin, that weird laugh,
a good amount of onscreen running and presto. I happen to like that onscreen persona so
I tend to enjoy the movies he’s in but it can’t hold down a movie by itself.
And because Ethan Hunt isn’t really a character occasionally the movie gets a bit weird. At
one point Alec Baldwin is trying to warn the Prime Minister about rogue agent Ethan Hunt,
who is as he says, and I’m not making this up, “The living manifestation of destiny.
Shockingly Hunt appears in the scene not long after in what, I guess, was supposed to be
a dramatic reveal - but since we the audience just see Ethan Hunt as Tom Cruise, and this
flat movie was created by Cruise and people that he’d worked with on previous films,
the scene comes off as this massive ego suppository. As though we the audience were just inserted
directly into Tom Cruises anus. My mind was suddenly filled with images from Going Clear,
not heroism and bravery.
Still, the main problem was probably me. There was absolutely zero need to binge watch the
series before going and seeing this one. Its not as if there were some narrative thread
through the 5 movies I needed to familiarize myself with. And since they all do basically
the same things over and over and over again, perhaps I had a little fatigue. There are
some funny lines, things blow up at an adequate pace, and Simon Pegg is almost worth seeing
the movie for on its own. But I'm personally going to give Mission Impossible Rogue Nation
a 2 out of 5.