Dorian Gray is alive and well and living in Hollywood today, going by the name of Tom Cruise. He’s actually 53 in chronological years, an age when even the most athletic actors begin slowing down. But somehow, not five minutes into his latest film, Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation, he’s dangling off the side of a plane that’s taking off and rapidly soaring hundreds of feet in the air. Since we’ve been told on reliable authority that this scene wasn’t shot using the usual CGI wizardry that could have just as easily had Cruise dangling off the side of a flying dragon, the only possible way he could have accomplished a feat that most stuntmen would have been reluctant to try would be if Cruise had somehow struck a Gray-like deal with the devil and, as a result, somewhere else in Hollywood there’s a picture of Cruise looking like his character in Tropic Thunder.
Cruise doesn’t seem to be aging one bit, as his stunt work in Rogue Nation demonstrates. However, the plot of Rogue Nation is a different beast entirely. It seems cobbled together from bits and pieces of lesser episodes of the Mission: Impossible television series and a healthy dose of The Usual Suspects. The former should come as no surprise and, considering that Christopher McQuarrie, who won an Oscar for the Suspects script also wrote and directed Rogue Nation, nor should the latter. Unfortunately, McQuarrie doesn’t seem to have added anything fresh to his story in the 20 years between these two projects.
Rogue Nation is based on an interesting premise, that a group of highly trained, completely ruthless intelligence agents from various countries could pull off a series of assassinations, bombings, and various other acts of sabotage and mayhem completely undetected by the world’s law enforcement and intelligence authorities. The man behind this operation, dubbed the Syndicate, is Solomon Lane (Sean Harris), a rogue ex-British intelligence agent. The blowhard director (Alec Baldwin) of the CIA has no clue about all this. He is instead obsessed with Ethan Hunt (Cruise) and the Impossible Mission Force, which for reasons that make sense in spy thrillers but not the real world, he’s determined to shut down. Hunt gets blamed for some of the Syndicate’s wrongdoing and has to go into hiding, while the remaining members of the IMF, also for reasons that make sense in spy thrillers but not the real world, are allowed to hang around the CIA to help Hunt out clandestinely.
As Hunt pursues Lane, he also acquires a new ally of sorts, Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson sporting a character name straight out of Casablanca), who may or may not be a deep cover British operative. Faust saves Hunt’s life once, then comes across his path a second time, during a performance of Turandot at the Vienna Opera. Hunt believes the Syndicate intends to kill the Austrian prime minister and with the help of former IMF buddy Benji (Simon Pegg), tries to stop the assassination. Hunt and Benji then come across Ilsa a third time, appropriately in Casablanca itself, still unsure whether she can be trusted or not.
Casablanca also happens to be the setting of the last of Rogue Nation’s seemingly impossible set pieces, a car-and-motorcycle chase that pits a helmetless Cruise and various helmeted stunt people on motorcycles and others in cars against each other as they race through the streets of the city and into the mountains beyond. That set piece follows a suspenseful cat-and-mouse sequence involving Cruise, Pegg, Ferguson, and a couple of bad guys backstage and among the catwalks of the opera house and a mission in which an underwater Cruise has to hold his breath for half the movie in a rapidly rotating tank of water to reprogram a computer. And of course, there’s the movie’s opening cargo plane sequence.
Throughout the first half of the movie, the script merely serves as a vehicle to get the characters from one location and set piece to another. But by the time the dust settles on the motorcycle chase scene, viewers (and the film makers) realize that there’s nearly half the movie to go and many of the bad guys, including Lane and a character affectionately dubbed the “Bone Doctor” (who does not heal broken bones but causes them), are still on the loose. So, the script kicks into overdrive, and Ilsa and Lane and IMF member Brandt (Jeremy Renner) and the CIA director do a lot of talking, while Hunt does a lot of glowering. The net result of all that is that we’re supposed to be unsure who’s on the side of the angels and who isn’t and whether Hunt is being manipulated into helping the bad guys accomplish their master plan (which is never fully explained) or manipulating them into stopping it.
The best thrillers, including McQuarrie’s Usual Suspects, accomplish such verbal chess with flair, but Rogue Nation plods along. True, there are some fight scenes along the way, but those are rather staid, some of the movie franchise’s trademark jiggery pokery with people wearing rubber masks, and an ending that harkens back to the television series. But despite pros like Renner, Pegg, Ving Rhames (as Luther, the IMF’s other team member), and Baldwin, the dialogue gets more confusing than edifying. Rogue Nation really needed a memorable set piece finale instead of a fizzle.
If Rogue Nation’s script lacks the timing of its predecessor Ghost Protocol, the set pieces it does have are even more spectacular. The scene at the opera house actually builds suspense in a Hitchcockian manner that conjures up visions of the master’s The Man Who Knew Too Much. However, the movie’s main accomplishment is to instill a sense of awe at human physical, death defying accomplishment in an audience jaded by dozens of increasingly hokey CGI spectaculars in which the only danger is that of a technician spraining his wrist while manipulating the switches on the control panel. Rogue Nation is exciting for the same reason that watching circus flying trapeze artists is ultimately more exciting than watching cinematic flying Avengers. And it’s no coincidence that Rogue Nation was not released in 3D. Cruise, McQuarrie, and company have no need to sell out in order to produce a few computer-generated gotcha moments.
Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation is by no means merely a Cruise stunt show. The Mission: Impossible franchise has spent five films tweaking supporting casts until they’ve finally got the right elements in place. The other IM Force members and their blustery adversary Baldwin have their roles, and the byplay and banter are often a good bit of fun. And the movie’s ace in the hole is the heretofore unknown Ferguson. There’s little doubt where Ilsa’s loyalties ultimately lie (Lane’s insistence on giving her about a dozen “last chances” is one of the plot’s bigger holes), announced sixth installment in the series should be even more remarkable for showing what a 55-year-old superstar can accomplish.) But in an era in which there’s often virtually nothing real on the screen, it’s good to be able to see actual human beings daring to follow in the footsteps of killer robots and assorted sundry monsters. Here, Tom Cruise has shown himself to be the biggest monster of them all.but she has the toughness and sizzling sex appeal to make it work. There’s no real spark between her and Cruise, nor does there need to be. They simply admire each other’s physical and acrobatic prowess and that’s enough.
As summer action blockbusters go, Rogue Nation is one of this year’s better ones, but it’s not something people will remember (other than the cargo plane sequence). It’s remarkable for what it shows a 53-year-old Hollywood superstar accomplishing. (By that token, the already announced sixth installment in the series should be even more remarkable for showing what a 55-year-old superstar can accomplish.) But in an era in which there’s often virtually nothing real on the screen, it’s good to be able to see actual human beings daring to follow in the footsteps of killer robots and assorted sundry monsters. Here, Tom Cruise has shown himself to be the biggest monster of them all.
