Tom Cruise has got to be one of our maddest actors. Actually, one of our maddest human beings, period. Seriously. I think he should be locked up. And I think the first video you should play at his trial would be the first five minutes of this film, where he hangs off a plane. Even before I'd seen the film, I'd seen a behind the scenes featurette about how it really is Tom Cruise hanging off a plane. No green screen, no CGI plane, nothing. Even the stunt men call him insane for hanging off a plane - and these are the guys who volunteer to be set on fire.
He is also, in his own way, brilliant. He couldn't make a film any other way, and his presence enlivens the dullest of thrillers. When given free reign, he isn't just in the film, he is the film. Without Tom Cruise, Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation would only be adequate, a well-made if convoluted thriller that cheerfully dispenses with any notions of realism in favour of going directly for the fun-jugular. But with Tom Cruise, the film plays to a different register of entertainment, and the film becomes significantly better as a result.
The story - well, you know the story, even if you don't know the story. The secret task force IMF (which might as well stand for Insane Mother F'ers) is threatened by the emergence of a rival organisation, inventively named The Syndicate. They quickly kick off things by gassing Ethan Hunt and dragging him to their underground lair, where he's threatened by a guy named "The Bone Doctor". Unsurprisingly, he prescribes a treatment of his own hacksaw-branded medicine. But before he can get around to business he's taken out by one of his own, Ilsa (Rebecca Ferguson). She frees Hunt, but disappears as quickly as she emerges, and he's left to puzzle over why her accent sounded so British and M-I6-y. (It really does take him half the film to work it out.)
Meanwhile, the IMF is swallowed up by the pesky CIA - helmed by a straight-laced Alec Baldwin - who won't stop at anything to capture Hunt and bring him to justice, once and for all. He's even repurposed Hunt's old buddies, Benji (Simon Pegg) and William (Jeremy Renner) - though it's not long before the crew's reunited and saving the world again. (The slightly dull Paula Patton has been replaced by the reliable Ving Rhames.)
The plot doesn't make much sense, though it does have an amusingly British spin on things - I don't think we were supposed to laugh when a plot to kidnap the Prime Minister of Britain was announced. But it doesn't matter. We're watching to see Tom Cruise do barmy things. We want to see him navigate machinery while holding his breath underwater, we want him to travel at 100 mph on a motorbike through the streets of Morocco, we even want to see him dangle upside-down in an opera theatre in Vienna, and slide down a rope to his escape. It's bizarre how well it works, but it does, namely because it is knowingly ridiculous. (The rules of physics take a hit - it's ludicrous how many people survive horrendous car-crashes in this film.) Cruise and his team have struck upon a winning formula, and while not all of it always works - Ferguson's character is periodically fetishised, and the villain's nothing to write home about - it's still a film that knows how to deliver its crowd-pleasing punches effectively.
★★★
