Emotion Impossible

Rating: 6/10 (11 August 2015)

Five movies in and the M:I franchise still cannot come up with an original plot. All of them are about rogue agents, as well as several Bond movies, and all of those dreary Bourne efforts. Rogue Nation is no exception here.
When the IMF is amalgamated into the regular CIA this leaves Ethan Hunt a wanted man without a country or any clue how to catch the latest bad guy. He meets his British sort-of counterpart when double-crossed in London and spends the rest of the movie catching up with her.
The female in question is Rebecca Ferguson who spends the entire movie doing "duck face" as it is apparently the only expression her face is capable of. You'll lose count of how many times she jumps up on people in order to subdue them. She and Cruise have ZERO chemistry as they work with and against each other while the plot doubles back on itself one too many times.
The main bad guy is an irritating bore, also incapable of any expression. He might as well be played by that creepy old man who lives down the road from you. It was genuinely uncomfortable whenever he was on screen. Not only that but the movie feels the need to have a secondary bad guy who looks virtually identical to him. Really bad casting there!
As with the other movies in the series the plot is just GARBAGE and you'll quickly lose track of it and just enjoy the action scenes for the mindless spectacle. The atmosphere is quite good however.
Five movies and five different directors and this franchise still cannot establish itself with a decent standalone plot. Ving Rhames and Tom Cruise have been the only consistent players from the start despite there being several marketable cast members to bring back and make the continuity between movies stronger (Maggie Q, Anthony Hopkins, Lawrence Fishburne, Thandie Newton). It feels like they have the formula backwards, the plot is always the same while the majority of the cast is always different.
I didn't mind M:I 5, but for me this franchise needs to take bigger and bolder steps and stop being about former/current agents gone bad. They also need to ditch Rebecca Ferguson who had less charisma than Jai Courtney on sedatives.