Mission Impossible V :Rogue Nation – The Last and the Best (so far)

Rating: 7/10 (7 September 2015)

Has anybody ventured, in some cinema school or university, to write a comparative paper on Hunt and Bond? Waiting for an improbable, or rather "impossible", clash between the two super special agents, spiced with a guest appearance of Jason Bourne, we can be happy with the fifth installment of the Mission Impossible saga, Rogue Nation, that so far seems also the best. It might be, as some smart critics pointed out, that choosing every time a different director, besides lengthening the films' incubation (on average 46 months versus the 30 months needed to see again 007), injects new life into the character into whom Cruise has invested a large stake of his recent actor's and producer's efforts. Surely, the first blockbuster, following the Jack Reacher's 2012 debut with Tom Cruise as well, of director Christopher McQuarrie, unforgettable best screenplay Oscar for the clever The Usual Suspects, has contributed to the crafting of some characters as well as to the "mirror" structure of the story, laid out from the very beginning in the London record shop scene, which breaks, with good innovation, the linear expectations of the audience and sets the pace for the various double games recurrent in the movie and instrumental in keeping the audience glued to Ethan and his team on their actions to stop the criminal actions of a mysterious Syndicate, a Machiavellian and sophisticated organization that the US and UK agencies let slip out of their hands. The genre's peculiarities remain, well necessary for the public feel at home and balance the novelties of the special effects, and for sure Rogue Nation is even too close to some of its predecessors as well as 007's, but, enhancing the bonds between the main hero and his team, it is able to define its own trademark by leaving enough breathing space to the other IMF members. Each time Benji (Simon Plegg, simply great) or Luther (Rhames steals every scene he is in) are on screen the movie takes off and also Renner (star also of two Bourne films), in the role surely most difficult to define, improves his impact on the story's dynamics. And then there is Ilsa, well played by Rebecca Ferguson, whose role becomes more and more central in the film's development, maybe booking, as already done by Renner in Ghost Protocol, a return ticket for the next episode. Some banalities, like few of Baldwin's lines, and narrative shortcuts, like the Syndicate plans and IMF activities, are unavoidable in this kind of movies but the excellent pace, already there in the previous films, is here coupled with a better development of the peculiarities of both Ethan Hunt and the other members of IMF and, particularly, with a sound enhancement of their mutual actions and reactions as a team, the real difference between Mission Impossible's hero, deeply rooted within IMF and very sensitive to the value of friendship, and his colleague sipping Vodka Martini, definitely much more a loner. Waiting, in a few years, for the sixth episode, Rogue Nation deserves the best marks of the series so far and offers a predicable but enjoyable entertainment that can satisfy both the action movies' lovers as well as those who enter the theaters with many more prejudices for this kind of movies.