Film Review: Mission Impossible - Rogue Nation
A little history: I'd watched the first two Mission Impossible movies in a darkened cinema, but since then, I've only ever watched them on DVD - both the J.J.Abrams directed M3, and Ghost Protocol, as essentially I'd rather collect and keep said DVDs to watch whenever I could, because they were simply that genre of movies that bear repeated viewing, without killing too much brain-cells - by which I do not necessarily mean they are "brainless entertainment", but that they could be enjoyed regardless if you needed to focus hard at the screen for over 60mins to know what's going on, or turn away and do stuff, and turn back to see the essentially scenes worth looking at.
Go it? Good.
MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: ROGUE NATION is thankfully, worthy of being collected on DVD, although I managed to watch it in a darkened cinema first!
Chock full of action and faux suspense (you'd know by now the "impossible" is ever "possible", so no sense investing your attention in fretting the inevitable), and some nicely done cleverness sprinkled throughout, only but sparingly ("you HAD to gt the four by four!" heheheheheh), and in-between the bigger action set pieces.
Alas, the hustle and bustle of the villain(s) turned pretty much mush by the film's end, and frankly would not lend in anyway the character of "Solomon Lane" as any celluloid villain of repute. Such a pity, because he started so awesomely evil, ya know?
Directed by Christopher McQuarrie (who directed Cruise in "Jack Reacher", another seemingly clever film which I have since watched twice on DVD), the plot premise and action pieces worked decent and well, or at least well enough I was not out looking for any loopholes, anyways :)
Tom Cruise has aged rather ruggedly by this film, although he still keeps his body taut and all. Alas, this particular film shows his "age" on screen, with not much make-up to hide them wrinkles (or maybe there were, I'd never know for sure…), which is not necessarily a "bad thing", but becomes a bit of a "stretch" at times. methinks. But yes, this is an auctioneers and not much thought is needed to be invested in it, to enjoy it :)
All the players are commendable and "reliable" to a point where their roles continue forth from previous celluloid outings, even Benji who did a sudden hero-speak is acceptable, and within believability of "character development", which in M:I films, is something pretty rare beyond each individual films.
Those looking out for Jeremy Renner's "William Brandt" character to bust some moves (lke he did in "Ghost Protocol") will be disappointed, and Ving Rhames is by now a regular walk on as "Luther Stickell", so nothing too obscure about him and his.
The surprise new "addition" is Alec Baldwin's "Alan Hunley" ("Chief Director of CIA", at first …), whose role progression reminded me so much of James Bond's "M" in "Skyfall" … and by that I meant "Mallory's" ~ *cough*
The surprise for me was Rebecca Ferguson as "Ilsa Faust", whose role drove head-to-head with "Ethan Hunt", and came out look splendid! Her fight with the "Bone Doctor" at near the end of the film was the highlight for me, actually!
I would be extremely interested to see her character spin-off into her own adventures, actually. The seeming cliches of a "British" spy going toe-to-toe with 007, would work brilliantly with "Ilsa", nothings!
As for THAT scene where Hunt as hanging of the side of the plane? I'm not going to spoil it for you, so go watch the movie for yourselves … don;t be too disappointed tho, it's only a movie after all :p
"Mission Impossible" films are not "essential" watching on my lists, but they are highly entertaining (not counting "M2", sorry) and are always recommended watches for, well, "entertainment".
All in all good clean fun and recommended with a box of salted popcorn washed own with soda!
My popcorn rating is a yummy 3 Box out of 5 Boxes FTW :)
