Capers upscaled but plot self destructs in Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation

WITH its gossamer thin characters, convoluted plot and cliched dialogue, the fifth Mission: Impossible instalment fails to impress.

THE fifth M: I movie gives Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) a hectic travel itinerary.

He has a motorcycle chase in Morocco, hijacks an aeroplane in Minsk, fights terror at the Tower of London and finds time to attend the opera in Vienna.

The capers are upscaled as well. A showcase sequence has Hunt holding his breath to infiltrate a vast underwater computer system in time to allow offsider Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg) to pass through a security scan. The days when we were impressed by Cruise hanging from a wire seem a long time ago.

Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt in a scene from Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation.

Returning from the previous film along with Pegg are Jeremy Renner and Ving Rhames, who join Hunt’s latest quest even though IMF has been officially shut down by CIA boss Hunley (Alec Baldwin — impossible to take seriously). They’ve gone rogue, again.

There’s also a woman of mystery, played by Swedish actor Rebecca Ferguson, who may or may not be working for a terrorist organisation known as The Syndicate. Her name is Ilsa and she shows up in Casablanca — just as another Swede, Ingrid Bergman, playing another Ilsa, once did in the 1942 film of that name, needing Humphrey Bogart’s help in an altogether more urgent, impossible mission.

Tom Cruise doesn’t disappoint with the stunts in the new Mission Impossible.

Writer-director Christopher McQuarrie loves his winking allusions to Casablanca, such as the title of The Usual Suspects, the screenplay for which won him an Oscar.

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The twists and turns of that seminal 1996 thriller defied disbelief through smart character writing. The characters in Rogue Nation, by contrast, are gossamer thin and the convolutions get silly very quickly, closely followed by the dialogue.

The giddy pleasure of the previous (and best) Mission: Impossible instalment, from The Incredibles director Brad Bird, is absent here, and Cruise delivers a performance that is as flat and chartless as any he has given. Now showing

Rebecca Ferguson in a scene from the film.

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE — ROGUE NATION

Released by Paramount

Star rating 2/5

Director Christopher McQuarrie

Starring Tom Cruise, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson

Rating M

Running time 132 minutes

Verdict The plot self destructs in the mind in five seconds

Originally published as Capers upscaled but plot self destructs in Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation