Film review: Mission impossible:Rogue Nation - Back with a bang

Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation offers action-lovers an experience that tops the franchise’s prequels

Directed by Christopher McQuarrie, the highly-anticipated Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation has a plot as complex as the previous films, if not more. Ethan Hunt is back to his usual hijinks, and the Impossible Mission Force has been disbanded. The dream team — comprising of Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise), Benji (Simon Pegg), William Brandt (Jeremy Renner) and Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames) — faces off against a network of highly-skilled special agents known as the Syndicate. These highly trained operatives are hell-bent on creating a new world order through an escalating series of terrorist attacks. Unlike the previous films in the Mission Impossible franchise, Rogue Nation depicts Hunt as a seasoned professional who has been rendered physically weak over a few years but retains his strong dedication to his profession.

A big tick in the movie’s ‘positives’ column is the fact that Cruise takes his stunts a step further in this new MI venture. The action is thrillingly over the top: while in the last film, Cruise leaped off the towering Burj Khalifa, this time around, he hangs on for dear life to the side of a plane as it takes off.

Rebecca Ferguson is a refreshing new addition to the cast and dazzles as Ilsa Faust, a Syndicate operative who offers much more than what meets the eye — unlike the bevy of beauties in previous MI offerings, Faust is in her mid-30s and behaves like it, and not like a hormonal teenager. Critics have likened her character to Charlize Theron’s Furiosa from Mad Max: Fury Road and the comparison is entirely just — Faust is as tough, resourceful and brainy as the Fury Road heroine.

Of course, no Mission Impossible film would be complete without a plethora of enviable gadgets, and this film features a lipstick with a secret, a playbill that transforms into a laptop and a vinyl record that does something every fan of the classic Mission: Impossible TV series can relate to.



All in all, the movie’s sharp dialogue and twists and turns in the plot keep viewers on the edge of their seats. The film flies by as Hunt travels from Belarus to Austria to Morocco and then to London, with a few more stops in between. Under McQuarrie’s capable direction, the cast come to the screen with their guns blazing, and ultimately, even if the whole idea of turning an impossible mission into a possible one has become quite predictable, the journey offers a thrilling ride.



Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, August 9^th, 2015.