out-Bonding James Bond

Rating: 8/10 (25 September 2015)

I did not see any other blockbuster this summer, but I have the feeling that having seen the latest in the 'Mission:Impossible' series may have been sufficient for having seen the best. I confess that good action movies are one of my guilty pleasures, but I am quite picky on this respect. Besides the mandatory portion of attractive women and spectacular landscapes, the ratio between action scenes and story telling must not be too unbalanced on any side, car chases and fight and gun shooting scenes must be well filmed and fun to follow, the pace should be alert but still allow me to understand who shoots whom, and there must be action movies logic in what happens on screen, which of course has not too much to do with the real life logic. 'M:I 5' comes close to perfection on all these respects.
Whoever followed the previous films know already that the writers of the scripts will not avoid doing a few things: make sure that Tom Cruise (alias Ethan Hunt) is on screen 99% of the time, that he will sooner or later fall in for one of the female characters in the story (Swedish actress Rebecca Ferguson is on duty this time) with no good chances for a happy and long married life to follow, that enough countries and landscapes will be traveled during the movie than in a full season of a National Geographic series, and that some of these landscapes will be badly altered after our heroes visit them. This installment also continues the intrigue in the previous one, as the secret services department to which Ethan Hunt belongs is threatened by the more conventional services, which obliges the hero to go rogue and become the most chased person on the planet, followed by both the good guys and bad guys organizations.
When all these happen on screen my first thoughts were to remember that this is almost the same script that was written for the latest James Bond series (with the changes of M, remember?). Actually under the hands of director and script writer Christopher McQuarrie the latest 'Mission: ...' looks more and more like a James Bond film, even better than one on some respects. Just listen to the variations of the music theme for example. The two series address now the same space in the movies spectators preferences and the borders are being effaced. It's good that the releases seem to be coordinated to avoid bringing to screen the new films in the two series during the same summer seasons. If the quality stays at this level I will not complain. This summer's 'Bond/Mission' was well written, alertly directed, Tom Cruise who gets near his mid-50s is in an acting and physical shape of an early 30-er, and even the stiff-as-usual acting of Alec Baldwin could not spoil too much, maybe because his role was of a stiff CIA boss. The bad guys were also quite schematic, and Cruise will need a more ferocious adversary in the next one. Yet – highly recommended to all fans of action movies – get your popcorn, sit back, relax and enjoy!