A slight disappointment given whats gone before!

Rating: 7/10 (30 March 2016)

The Mission Impossible series has only gotten bigger since its inception on to the big screen 20 years ago opening with Brian De Palmas smaller scale slick and intense thriller where we are introduced to Tom Cruise's secret agent Ethan Hunt. John Woo then steps up the action with MI2 Slow-mo shots galore and full of the directors trademarks which work ever so well in Hard Boiled but fail Massively and is a miss-step in the franchise. JJ Abrahams directs the darkest in the series to date , portraying a more vulnerable Ethan Hunt and for my money has the best villain of the series in Phillip Seymour Hoffman. 2011s Ghost Protocol yet again ramps up the action to good effect with some of the best action set pieces of the series bringing on board Brad Bird in the hot seat and seemed to revitalize the flailing franchise.
Rogue Nation is the fifth installment. The IMF has been disbanded and Ethan Hunt is now an outlaw for the C.I.A. The team have their most impossible mission yet, eradicating the syndicate - A rogue organization helmed by Lane (Sean Harris) committed to destroying the IMF.
Full of blistering well done fast paced action as to be expected but I don't think it has moved the franchise any further, now more than ever in the Tom Cruise show has become a series of massive action sequences that could be shown in any order and it wouldn't make a difference. Nothing quite matches the stunt on the Burj Khalifa, here it seems to be a nuts and bolt affair which makes it mostly tension free which is a disappointment.
Christopher McQaurrie does a fine job in the directors chair but the screenplay is so-so. McQaurrie seems to be able to direct over the top action with his eyes shut one of the best in the business in this genre (The Way of the Gun is an underrated classic in action cinema). Which is why it's hard to take that MI:5 is lacklustre in almost every other aspect with the exception of a couple of great action sequences.
Same old, same old for the crew here Cruise the unstoppable machine with some spectacular and daring stunts which he indulges in more than ever, Simon Pegg's Benji the comic relief which for me grated at times, The ever tough and stolid Brandt (Jeremy Renner), Ving Rhame's Luther cool as a cucumber as always. A new face in Rebecca Ferguson for my money (Acting wise at least) is the star she absolutely convinces in her role and you as the viewer are never quite sure what sides she is really on.
There is certainly a lot of value in here for action heads it just seems for me at least to be getting somewhat stale don't get me wrong I do like it as it is one of the better franchises out there. It's the same old and that's all good if that's what you are after get some more suspending wires and tapping on laptops mid-air. Worth checking out but for me was a slight disappointment . It adds nothing new for the audience maybe it does for Cruise personally film by film outdoing himself stunt wise. As a spectacle it's decent but not the best in the series.