Mission Forgettable

Rating: 6/10 (1 August 2015)

During one scene of the film, in which the female character offers to run away with Tom Cruise to escape their respective predicaments, I realized that the director had all his action movie clichés down pat, but understood them to such an extent that he tried, in a rather pretentious manner, to free them from their status as clichés. The result? Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation is a direct cut-and-paste collage of the best elements of its predecessors, mashed together with a senseless plot and lazy attempts at human interaction. It exploits its serial niche of spectacular, death-defying stunts, while avoiding its seemingly constant and inescapable lack of humanity.
At the beginning of the film, the IMF is disbanded, and our good friend from Ghost Protocol, Agent Brandt (Jeremy Renner), is ordered to call the IMF's field agents in so they can take desk jobs at the CIA. Meanwhile, our hero, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise (who else?)), is busy fighting a one-man war against an elusive organization known as the Syndicate. He decides not to check in because he was personally insulted by a guy with glasses, captured by the Syndicate, and introduced to a good looking woman who helped him escape. He instead decides to hunt down the Syndicate, and is subsequently labelled as a rogue agent by the CIA. As far as concepts go, it ain't bad. But it feels too familiar. The concept of the invincible fugitive running from the law in a self-righteous pursuit of justice has been replicated so many times in so many different ways that the plot finds itself in a desperate cavern of clichéd emptiness. Sadly it attempts to fill in this emptiness with the use of even more clichés, including the femme fatale, the bomb-strapped-to-chest discussion, the impossible heist, the running around from city to city, the ridiculously strong German brute, and endless shots of men getting out of cars. But in its defense, narrative creativity has dissipated from Hollywood's action films, replaced instead by stunts and crazy violence.
The stunts are spectacular. I can't deny that. From the first minutes of the film, in which Tom Cruise holds onto to a plane door as it takes off, to a positively riveting scene where Tom Cruise pulls off an underwater heist, the action is so cool that it alone makes the film worth watching. It is wonderfully choreographed, set to a racing soundtrack, and truly intense. But when the action is turned down to allow the characters to interact, the dialogue is fraught with limp conversation fillers and terrible "can I trust you?" discussions in mansions and dilapidated rooms. As a result, the characters remain cocky, boring, and pretty much invincible. Even the usually likable Tom Cruise takes on a pretentious, self-righteous faith in his own amazingness. Just once, I wanted to see Ethan Hunt express the vulnerability that he did in the first scene of Mission Impossible 3. Just once, I wanted to see him emotionally mature. But naw, he's way too busy kicking everyone's butt from Morocco to London to address his own faults. Even his relationship with the femme fatale is underdeveloped and boring, as if he barely recognizes her as more than another wrench (I said wrench) that will allow him to dismantle the Syndicate. How can you sympathize with a one-dimensional character who is so wrapped up in his own pride that he puts his blind followers in the path of danger so he can have the last laugh against a guy he barely knows? Well, the simple answer is that you can't.
Movies are supposed to make you feel something. Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation does not. Thus, it is a triumph in the area of action and stunt work, but little more than that.