Ethan Hunt - not just buff but buffed!

Rating: 7/10 (7 August 2015)

ROGUE NATION delivers more of what we expect from an Impossible Mission: super-stunts, chases (cars and motorbikes - again), shoot-outs, close-combat fights and (less than usual) rubber-face impersonations. Like 007, Ethan Hunt has been 'rebooted' for the age of Jason Bourne and Frank Martin, cranking up what was always the most fast-paced of the major action-hero franchises.
The plot isn't exactly new. The IMF team are in disgrace after one of their operations is ruined by the intervention of a terror outfit called The Syndicate (think SPECTRE). A mystery woman (Rebecca Ferguson) appears to working both in and against the Syndicate, whose leader (Sean Harris) looks more like a mega-creepy serial killer (Francis Dolarhyde?) than a Goldfinger or a Blofeld. Ethan gets captured, gets free, gets captured again: it's plotting by numbers - except that the movie's forward momentum somehow carries you past the sense of familiarity.
Ving Rhames's role seems to have been scaled down. Simon Pegg's, on the other hand, has been beefed up. But, of course, it's little Tommy Cruise (there's one brief scene highlighting his lack of height, a good gag) who carries the movie: he's not only buff but somehow buffed - with a kind of 'glow' to him, which may just be his sheer 'star-power' shining out of the screen.
The locations - Vienna, London, Morocco - aren't ground-breaking, although the botched assassination during a performance of 'Turandot' at the Vienna State Opera is splendidly choreographed. Writer/director Christopher McQuarrie has polished a re-run of a well-tried formula and made it look (almost) reinvented. Two hours of crowd-pleasing high-voltage hokum.