Less over the top but lots of fun

Rating: 8/10 (9 October 2015)

In the intro scene, Hunt is after some weapons on a plane so he gets on the departing plane which leads to the scene featured on the movie poster. It looks pretty cool.
Next, Hunt goes into a record store, does the usual spy talk and gets a record from the store girl. He goes into a booth and the record offers him a mission, but it doesn't come from the higher ups, but from the evil Syndicate which comes clean and admits it exists. As he tries to leave, a guy shoots the girl and Hunt is gassed. When he wakes up he's bound and about to be chemically tortured by some pretty girl. Then some other bad guys arrive ready to physically torture him. So the girl suddenly fights them and frees Hunt.
Meanwhile Renner is in DC being grilled by a Senate committee. They decide to dissolve the IMF and move its duties to the CIA whose boss Hunley is salivating at the chance. Benji has a desk job at the CIA and one day gets free tickets to the opera in Vienna. There he's contacted by a Hunt gone off the grid and rogue. At the opera they find themselves in the middle of an assassination attempt against some Austrian official. There are 3 shooters, one of them is pretty girl. Hunt saves the day but pretty girl has to turn herself in to the bad guys but leaves Hunt and Benji with some info.
They meet up with her again in Morocco. Bad guy wants some data stashed in an impenetrable facility. The only way in is for Benji to go in pretending to be an employee but first Hunt has to upload his profile onto their computer, which is underwater. The mission is a success but pretty girl escapes once again, this time with the drive for the bad guy. Hunt and co. have a copy of the info buy only the English prime minister can decrypt it. So now they have to grab him, and eventually the bad guy who's got plenty of cards up his sleeve.
Rogue Nation has much humbler aspirations than its predecessors and that's a good thing. After the great but over-the-top Ghost Protocol there was nowhere else to go but to shrink things a bit. It's still a long movie. The globe-trotting has been reduced too, or at least we don't get too see much of the places featured. There's the mandatory car chase scene that turns into a very cool motorcycle chase scene that could have been cooler had it been longer and shown more from the on-board cameras. Absent thankfully is the usual long foot-chase scene that Cruise seems to like so much. Harris does a great job as the despicable villain, but it's the lovely Ferguson who steals the show. No matter how long she was on screen I couldn't get enough of her. One gets the impression that Rogue Nation lacks something, perhaps the usual climactic wild action scene, but otherwise this movie is pretty good. What it is missing is some of the great teamwork that was so enjoyable in Ghost Protocol. The Patton-character or someone like it is missing. Ferguson would have made a great sidekick instead she goes back an forth between being an ally and an enemy. Overall this is another strong entry into the series.