Review: Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation goes off the grid

TOM Cruise returns as franchise spearhead Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation. But is the series getting tired the fifth time around?

Funny guy .... Simon Pegg provides comic relief.

Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation (M)

Director: Christopher McQuarrie (Jack Reacher)

Starring: Tom Cruise, Rebecca Ferguson, Simon Pegg, Jeremy Renner, Alec Baldwin, Ving Rhames

Rating: **1/2

Take out the stunts, and it’s almost a Mission: Intolerable

The contents of the fifth instalment in the Mission: Impossible series divide very neatly in two.

The half of Rogue Nation that is nothing but set-piece stunts, chases, fights and drops from great heights is a pulpy pleasure to witness. Just as they were in the last MI offering, 2011’s Ghost Protocol.

The other half of Rogue Nation? This is where there are pressing problems, few of which are able to be adequately solved, in spite of a way-too-generous 130-minute running time.

To simplify, it’s a preponderance of unpolished plotting that truly takes the shine off Rogue Nation.

A convoluted and cockamamie yarn about a secret black-ops spy network killing world leaders for fun feels as if it has been lifted from the bad old days of Bond movies. You know, when Roger Moore and Timothy Dalton ruled a ropy roost.

To make matters worse, anyone who isn’t Tom Cruise (looking a little ragged these days as franchise spearhead Ethan Hunt) has to stand around movie-splaining all developments (sample dialogue: “If A, B or C happens, then this could spell D, E or F for G, H or I.”) as they happen.

After a stunning pre-credits sequence which sees Ethan run after, jump aboard and summarily disarm a jet plane full of nerve-gas missiles, the rot sets in quickly for Rogue Nation.

Hunt’s longtime handlers at the IMF (led by Jeremy Renner as Agent Brandt) have been absorbed by the CIA, whose blustery boss (Alec Baldwin) wants Hunt and his buddies yanked from the field ASAP.

Hunt, as is his style, ignores the order to down tools, and goes off the grid to expose and eradicate ‘The Syndicate’ (an anti-IMF mob comprised of bad dudes long presumed to be dead by all authorities).

A series of globetrotting location switches invariably ushers in an action sequence of high quality (Austria for an assassination at the Vienna Opera, Morocco for a deep dive inside a subterranean water facility, Great Britain for a kidnapping of the PM) and then yet more explanatory yapping of low quality.

Of the support cast, only newcomer Rebecca Ferguson (a mysterious double agent) and Simon Pegg (expanded comic relief duties) register any fleeting impact here.

As for Alec Baldwin, he may never live down having to deliver the worst line of idiotic dialogue (”Ethan Hunt is the living manifestation of destiny, and he has made you his mission”) this side of an Adam Sandler picture.

Originally published as Review: Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation goes off the grid