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| Directed and Written by Christopher McQuarrie |
Alo Party Peoples.
The Mission: Impossible movies have always been a puzzling box-office phenomenon. None of them have much in the way of memorable characters or compelling stories, what keeps drawing audiences out in droves to see them?
The answer, of course, is that they all have the presence of Tom Cruise, the embodiment of post-Star Wars 20th Century action heroes performing crazy stunts to carry them, and even becoming best friends with the Space Pope couldn't keep audiences away.
Rogue Nation is the latest in this series of Tom Cruise vehicles where (after an pre-credits opening stunt on the outside of an airplane that is simply amazing) secret agent Ethan Hunt is called before the US Senate to answer for all the collateral damage that he and the rest of the Impossible Mission Force have caused over the past four movies. Unable to convincingly defend them, the IMF is disbanded, only for Hunt to discover the Syndicate, an anarchist "anti-IMF" responsible for several acts of terror over the years, and he decides that he must go rouge in order to stop them, there are complications and double crosses along the way...
... actually, does anyone going to see these movies care about the plot? Have y'all ever cared? On a story level, these movies are boiler plate, middle of the road, Saturday-afternoon-cable-fixture spy movies no different than Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, or Taken 3, or writer/director Christopher McQuarrie's last movie Jack Reacher. Fortunately, once it was committed to celluloid, Rogue Nation plays out more like Skyfall.
People come to these movies to see Tom Cruise and an assortment of character actors say cool things while doing cool things, and Rogue Nation definitely delivers. The practical stunt work is simply amazing, they know how to do stylized action without dipping directly into cartoon logic, at one point a car chase through the streets of Casablanca rivals Fury Road for awesome automotive action, Rogue Nation is more of a live-action cartoon than the actual live-action cartoons coming out of Marvel. I mean that in the best possible way, if the Avengers movies are a fireworks display, Rogue Nation is a tilt-a-whirl, and it's one of the best tilt-a-whirls to come out of Hollywood in a while.
Y'all know the drill by know, if you've enjoyed the Mission: Impossible movies before, you'll enjoy Rogue Nation, it's a fun mid-summer distraction, Cruise still has it, the stunts are better than ever, it's just plain fun.
Have a nice day.
Greg.B
FINAL RATING: 4/5
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