Rogue Nation: Choose To Accept It

If I'm Sam Mendes, I'm shitting a brick right about now. Because SPECTRE is going to have to be one hell of a spy film to come anywhere near the heights of Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation, easily the best film of the series, and along with Mad Max: Fury Road, one of the best pictures of the year.

Christopher McQuarrie has directed two previous films - The Way of the Gun and Jack Reacher - but he's written plenty, including The Usual Suspects, Valkyrie and Edge of Tomorrow - and with Rogue Nation, he's put together a rocket-propelled, smartly written love letter to everything cool about the spy genre.

This production is A-game, audience-enthralling every step of the way. That jaw-dropper of Tom Cruise hanging off the side of an Airbus? That’s just in the opening teaser sequence. Ethan Hunt’s Impossible Missions Force is under attack on two fronts – by the blustering head of the CIA (Alec Baldwin) who wants to shut down the IMF for running without oversight – while a shadowy organization known as The Syndicate aims to wipe them out of existence. Cruise is in nearly constant motion here, and he’s terrific. But the real story in Rogue Nation is Rebecca Ferguson as a spy playing both sides of a very dangerous game. Kudos to McQuarrie for casting an actor, because Ferguson has serious chops – she’s Ingrid Bergman with combat skills, a remarkable discovery.

 

Simon Pegg gets a lot more time in the field here, and he’s sensational. Funny, but keeping the humor in check and balanced with a hefty dose of genuine peril. The bad guys in Rogue Nation are scary and effective, led by Sean Harris

(he was the Mohawk-sporting Fifield in Prometheus) as a reptilian manipulator with a chilling whisper. One of the most refreshing aspects of the film is how spycraft is depicted as an intricate game of lures and false moves designed to mislead your opponent. It’s a great script that simply kept me on the edge of my seat (and out of it) the entire time. There are genre nods to everything from Three Days of the Condorto the original TV show, the theme from which Joe Kraemer channels with equal measures of fealty and freshness.

 

The setpieces and stuntwork are nearly all devoid of computer assists and these sequences are simply phenomenal. There’s an amazing underwater heist, a Hitchcockian opera house assassination (stunningly edited by Eddie Hamilton) and a car/motorcycle chase that threatens to out-Frankenheimer Frankenheimer. The great Robert Elswit lenses everything to squeeze maximum havoc and threat out of every environment. 

 

Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation is one of the best action films in ages, and surpasses your summer movie expectations at every turn. Audiences hungry for intelligent, thrilling entertainment will find nothing better in theaters, period. It’s an absolute must-see.