Things change. Once upon a time I was somewhat given to commenting on the rather languid pace at which the makers of the Mission: Impossible movies produced their wares: six year gaps between instalments not being unusual. These days, however, they're coming out nearly as often as Bond films – though, again, the once regular-as-clockwork schedule of Eon's franchise has rather slipped in recent years.

Even so, nineteen years on from Brian de Palma's original movie, they're still only up to number 5, also known as Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie (he of The Usual Suspects renown, should the name occasion a tinkle). This time around, the story is – well, to be perfectly honest, it's very much like the story in the last couple of films in its general tone and so on, but the particularities are as follows.

Following a preposterous sequence with Tom Cruise hanging off the side of a plane in flight (this is the one you may have seen in the trailers and so forth; it has virtually no connection to the main plot), the Impossible Mission Force's government overseers come to the not-unreasonable conclusion that Cruise is raving mad and shut the whole agency down. However, Cruise has come across the existence of a special secret organisation dedicated to counter-intelligence, terrorism, revenge, and extortion, though it's obviously not That One, and refuses to be packed off to the padded cell the CIA have got ready for him. (Cruise goes on the run from his own bosses with such tedious regularity in these films that it's practically his standard operating procedure.)

Six months pass, with, we are invited to infer, Cruise leading the ham-fisted regular spooks a merry dance around the world, while back home his usual associates (primarily Simon Pegg, Jeremy Renner, and Ving Rhames) take a lot of stick from the new boss (Alec Baldwin) on his behalf. Anyway, Cruise invites Pegg to the opera in Vienna, not for a cultural night out but because he believes beastliness is afoot.

Of course Cruise is right and there follows a preposterous sequence in which no fewer than five people turn up intent on either shooting or blowing up the Austrian Chancellor, and it seems like every loose object in the opera house contains a concealed weapon of some kind. Cruise and Pegg make contact with enigmatic British agent Rebecca Ferguson (the only female main character, and the only one required to do a scene in her pants, in case you were wondering), and this leads to the obligatory sequence in which an impregnable bank vault must be robbed. It is, naturally, preposterous.

There is a motorbike chase and then a preposterous climax based around Cruise and the gang sticking up the British Prime Minister (the PM is played by Tom Hollander as a vague and comical figure, though of course he doesn't approach the wretchedness of the genuine article), and then... well, let's just say that Lalo Schifrin's classic theme gets played a lot.

It is all, in case you hadn't noticed, very preposterous stuff, but then that's what people seem to want, as it is raking in the readies and Mission: Impossible 6 is already on the drawing board. This series has become the purest of popcorn entertainment, owing no great loyalty to Bruce Geller's classic TV series: people just go along to see each new film because it's big and slick and loud entertainment, and it's got some reliable, familiar faces in it.

Chief amongst those is, of course, Tom Cruise, although the confusion amongst some commentators as to what exactly's going on with Tom Cruise's face is not without foundation – he may well be in alarmingly good shape for a man of his age, but his face does seem, um, variable at different points of the film. Nevertheless, this remains at heart a Tom Cruise vehicle, with all the baggage that comes with it – scenes where characters exclaim that he's a deranged obsessive take on a whole extra meaning, for instance. Early on someone says of him, 'I've heard the stories. They can't all be true,' which again suggests someone somewhere is being a bit playful. Regardless, the godlike essence of Cruise and his character is ultimately confirmed – he is, apparently, 'the living embodiment of destiny', or words to that effect, and this is said by someone who doesn't even like him very much. (One wonders whether the increased frequency of Cruise's Impossible excursions may be at all linked to a slight but definite fading in his star power.)

Business as usual continues elsewhere, with much of the film's heart and warmth coming from supporting bananas such as Pegg and Renner. Rhames gets a couple of nice moments but it's hard to shake the sense that he's mainly there to provide a link with previous films. There is the faintest sense of this being something of a greatest hits package, incorporating as it does a number of bits very reminiscent of previous films – bike chases, locations, and so on. There are also possibly-ominous signs of the undertaking running out of ideas – there's a long scene expositing the plot in the third act, and I caught myself thinking 'that guy there is going to whip off a rubber mask and reveal himself to be Tom Cruise in a minute', and – lo! – it came to pass pretty much as I expected.

Possibly the only real innovation this time is the fact that we are back in a position where the bad guys are British. Well, not everyone from the UK turns out to be a bad guy (and the question of what someone as audibly British as Simon Pegg is doing working for the CIA is never really addressed), but the British authorities are presented as being variously corrupt, ruthless, foolish, and self-centred. All very charming I'm sure, and perhaps in some way indicative of the fact that various companies in the Middle East and Asia co-financed this movie (so the baddies can’t be sinister foreign types).

But, as I believe I said, this movie is preposterous, so it's quite difficult to get genuinely annoyed with it. It's a good kind of preposterous, anyway – you don't actually question the plot while it's slipping by so agreeably, and if you won't remember the details of the plot a couple of weeks later, so what? It's undeniably fun while it's in front of you, but not much more.

Awix

10.08.15 Front Page

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