8/10

Rating: 8/10 (19 August 2015)

A joy of a film that reminds us why we go to the cinema and why we love action movies so much when they are crafted with passion and intelligence. Moreover, this is a brilliant addition to the Mission Impossible series and brings it to a status where I started seeing this as the next James Bond, meaning that after this film I really could see the franchise enduring for years and going on recasting the title role.
Now, I will calm my statement down a little because I do acknowledge that the movie has flaws which I will get into later, but what I want to get across is how energetic and thrilling the experience is. When I said it reminded me why I go to the cinema I really meant that because for so much of the duration of the film I wasn't thinking of anything else but the film and that is something that doesn't happen often, my attention was almost never dropped. Moreover, this film does such a brilliant job of nailing what action is about and how to execute it. Just as "Spy" this year wasn't a perfect film nor a masterpiece, yet was a lesson on how to do comedy, in the same way "Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation" is a lesson on how to do action.
Other than the fact that we are never served shaky cam or fast cutting crap, but we are always looking at the action unveil on screen, never, not even for a second do the filmmakers forget what makes action work fundamentally: brining on the storytelling. The film is divided into big sequences from location to location that are themselves divided into smaller set-pieces that perfectly fit together to make the bigger picture. And in everyone of these set-pieces the action is moving the story forwards in some way, there are always the perfect stakes that fill every scene with genuine tension. We always have a reason to be alarmed if something goes wrong and that is something that is often forgotten, yet is the key to the action movie experience that will have your palms sweating.
Lets not of course forget how brilliantly these scenes are staged. Stunt work from Cruise is as always flawless and the the rest of the crew pulls off amazing stuff. Photography is magnificent and paints the perfect colorful picture for the tone of the film. The actors are all taking this seriously and none of them goof around when they shouldn't, Ferguson is phenomenal but that has been already said by everyone. Finally the characters stick out even more with this entry.
After all this praise I have to stop a second and acknowledge the problems the film has that kept it from being the mouth-on-the-floor flick it could have been. The story is smart but isn't as clear as it should be. Too many times I had to think over what was going on and that isn't because the plot is over complicated but because the movie doesn't give the right beats where to breathe and and messes up altogether the clarity of many points because of that. Another minor consequence of this is that you aren't always sure of what the character motivations are, especially for Ferguson's character. I must say, this isn't as bothering as I make it out to be because the film manages to work around it and does that quite cleverly, yet I am still trying to add up the pieces of everything and they don't all seem to really fit.
Nevertheless, go support this so we can have more of these, it was thrilling and joyful, I had a blast.