MISSION IMPOSSIBLE REVIEW
Mission: Impossible –
Rogue Nation (12A)
AT 53, Tom Cruise counts as one of Hollywood’s more youthful action heroes, what with old Sly, Arnie and Harrison still arthritically kicking in doors and lobbing grenades.
Why the oldies haven’t yet been usurped by a new generation of grenade-chuckers is a question for another day.
In the meantime, we shouldn’t be at all catty about Cruise playing Impossible Missions Force (IMF) agent Ethan Hunt for the fifth time, almost 20 years after the first big-screen spin-off of the long-running TV series.
He still looks good jumping on to moving planes, abseiling down buildings and generally saving the planet, in this case from shadowy organisation The Syndicate.
His foe is a rogue former British agent, Solomon Lane (Sean Harris), who has recruited another British agent Ilsa Faust (splendidly played by a Swedish actress with a decidedly non-Swedish name, Rebecca Ferguson).
She is on the side of good or evil or possibly both. Not even the screenwriters seem entirely sure.
Meanwhile, the director of the CIA (Alec Baldwin) wants the IMF wound up on the not unreasonable basis that everywhere Hunt goes, there is mayhem.
So Hunt becomes a fugitive, although that only partly explains his impressive accumulation of air miles as he scoots between London, Vienna, Paris, Washington DC, Casablanca and Minsk.
The plot, which places British Prime Minister (Tom Hollander) in mortal danger, is as preposterous as we have come to expect f rom the f ranchise. Mission Implausible, in other words, but the writer- director this time is Christopher McQuarrie, who wrote The Usual Suspects, and knows how to craft a decent twist or two. There was probably more spectacular action in the last film but this one is just as much fun and could feasibly make a star of 31-year-old Ferguson, who steals scenes while everyone else is trying to steal memory sticks.
Moreover, in the week that the trailer for the new Bond film Spectre was released, with the same promotional ballyhoo that used to attend the launch of entire movies, here’s a timely reminder that 007 is not necessarily the world’s most debonair and resourceful secret agent.
He might not even have the best tune – Lalo Schifrin’s theme is as timelessly stirring as ever. And Simon Pegg, back as Hunt’s computer-geek sidekick, has a steady supply of witty one-liners. However, the best one-liner verges on the philosophical. ‘There are no allies in statecraft, Ilsa, only common interests,’ says her boss (Simon McBurney). How true.