Tom Cruise still packs a punch

Film: Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation

Director: Christopher McQuarrie

Cast: Tom Cruise, Jeremy Renner, Simon Pegg

The new

Mission Impossible movie, Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation , has a thin and predictable plot, but manages to pack so much power that it heaps one stunt after another, taking place in the air, water and land. Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) suspends from a plane’s window mid-air, manipulates the servers in a specially designed high-current underwater system and chases villains through the bendy-mountainous roads of Morocco on a super bike – all looking so dapper that he could be mistaken for a young supermodel.

Such a person – a former agent who wants to expose and take over the U.S.’ intelligence apparatus to change the existing ‘world order’ – should ideally be the hero of the people (think Edward Snowden), but in this film, he is the antagonist, after being turned into a caricature.

The most enjoyable sequences – the ones that make the audience clap and whistle – are those that are more traditional, not extraordinarily mounted.

Like the sequence where 53-year-old Tom Cruise, tied to a pole, hops and slides along the pole upside down to reach the top, in a bid to escape the shackles.

The Mission Impossible movies, just like other Hollywood franchises, are being progressively dumbed down, with the talkie portions merely existing as a placeholder to pass on information, in order to set up a stunt arriving soon, thereby sucking out any potential for drama.

Except for one moment just before the climax – also the most criticised scene in the film – where the undercover British agent (played by Rebecca Ferguson) asks Ethan Hunt to just come away with her, potentially threatening to turn the spy-action movie into a Romeo and Juliet.

Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation toes the same line taken by most spy movies: an all-powerful, elite spy organisation, Impossible Mission Force, is a threat to democracy and is most often easily abused, but we need it nevertheless to fight enemies, both internal and external.

The way the film is structured is interesting: The IMF, which is quite rightly disavowed and disbanded, its wings clipped after a top-level committee asks all the right questions about its over-reach, is reinstated and its existence justified by the same people who opposed it.

Yes, one can say that it is merely a plot device to keep the Mission Impossible franchise alive and kicking, but it is also the reflection of the times we live in, where concentration of power is justified for our own good.

Udhav Naig