So far this summer I’ve covered retrospectives and reappraisals of three major franchises with roots in nostalgia. Each of them is embarking on their fifth cinematic journey. To say that Terminator: Genisys and Vacation (2015) were coolly received would be an understatement. On the other hand, the Mission: Impossible series is in no danger of becoming antiquated and by virtue of that, Rogue Nation is an inexorably exciting entry in the spycraft subgenre.

Continuing from Ghost Protocol, the IMF has been dissolved due to the serendipitous events where a nuclear warhead narrowly clipped a skyscraper before submerging into the bosom of the ocean. Not known for their continuity, Christopher McQuarrie handsomely tweaks the conventions especially the embedded message inside a vinyl record where Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is entrapped and incapacitated within a booth.

At this point, Cruise should be top billed for his audacious stuntwork like Jackie Chan or Burt Reynolds. In this installment of his practical prowess, he sprints onto an Airbus Atlas airplane and he is bodily latched to a door while it achieves breakneck altitude. Of course, Cruise doesn’t cease there. He holds his breath for nearly six minutes in a tour-de-force underwater sequence where he must switch profile cards in a tank whilst conserving his oxygen.

While I do venerate Cruise and his unflappable enthusiasm, it borders on vainglorious ego inflation when Alan Hunley (Alec Baldwin) blusters about him having “no equal” to the British Prime Minister. That aside, the main chink in the armor is the villain. Outside of Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Owen Davian, Mission: Impossible isn’t rife with outstanding foes for Hunt. Sean Harris is certainly unsettling with his slightly strangulated voice but they can’t stifle the fact that he is a cog in a wider conspiracy.

Unfortunately, possibly due to obligations elsewhere, Jeremy Renner and Ving Rhames are the proverbial benchwarmers this time out with Renner mostly poker-faced in front of formal government inquiries. McQuarrie occasionally mutes the Joe Kraemer score to properly refocus on the agog claustrophobia ala the aforementioned Moroccan power station set piece.

Admittedly, newcomer Rebecca Ferguson is a gorgeous femme fatale but her pendulous loyalty is rickety. Why would anyone align themselves with her after her incessant betrayals? She is akin to Mack from Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. The callback to the glass booth with Solomon Lane (Harris) is clever but the conclusion is a bit listless.

Suffice it to say, Rogue Nation is another scrappy, albeit hyperextended blockbuster in Mission Impossible’s belt and I wouldn’t be opposed to the proposed sixth film. As long as the 53-year-old actor-producer Cruise is the purveyor of quality, Mission Impossible have no foreseeable end game.

Rating: 3.75 out of 5

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE- GHOST PROTOCOL

Of the films thus far, Ghost Protocol is the most giddy and exuberant. The first film was a Tom Clancy potboiler. The second film was an operatic ballet. The third was a gritty crime drama. Part 4 is a buoyant theme park ride. The detonation in Russia is disaster porn without the guilt of Soviet Union casualties. With his background in Pixar animation, director Brad Bird can storyboard crackerjack set pieces and this fourth entry is chockfull of them.

Despite his oeuvre primarily in non-live-action endeavors, Bird doesn’t flaunt the laws of physics. It genuinely appears that Cruise narrowly dodges a photorealistic, somersaulting vehicle during a sandstorm collision. The injection of humor stems from Pegg’s asides and Brandt’s (Jeremy Renner) squeamish resolve with gravity-defying tasks like the magnetic suit gag.

In spite of early canards that Renner might be the newfangled torchbearer of the series due to the waning star power of the Cruise, Ethan is still the de facto hero and he is in full-throttle superstar mode. For all the derring-do around him, Tom Cruise must be exalted for his daredevil insistence on performing his own stunts.

He must be an adrenaline junkie and thrive on the precipice of oblivion because he looks both exhilarated and clammy as he sprawls up, down and across the Burj Hotel in Dubai without the assistance of stunt doubles or CGI. When Ethan’s epoxy gloves malfunction, it tickles the glands inside the viewers and his safety is suddenly not irrefutable. It recreates the stimulus of vertigo and Cruise is our conduit for the IMAX-scale whirligig.

Of the contraptions, the portable silk-screen is my choice for most brilliant. In the Kremlin, Ethan and Benji must surreptitiously saunter in an archive room without alerting a guard. They slowly wander down the hallway with the screen that is equipped with a 3D camera for a depth-of-field reproduction of the backdrop. It recaptures the quiescent suspense of the vault scene in De Palma’s predecessor without being a foolhardy rehash.

After the bombardment of trailers for Rogue Nation, the cliffhanger message insinuates the looming doom of the Syndicate which is a tie-in to the fifth film. For the moment though, Ghost Protocol is unique from the Bourne films because it isn’t beholden to solemnity. Bird slashes the brake line and his chapter is an irresistibly cheerful romp that doesn’t buckle under the pressure of most fourth films.

Rating: 4 out of 5

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE 3

J.J. Abrams attempts to tether Mission: Impossible with both forlorn heart and continuity neither of which is required. This series of films are episodic by design and can be stripped down to the elemental pleasures of globe-trotting yarns. For a film with a skid-row in media res torture opening, the film’s tonal shifts from morose to rip-roaring (ex. The Vatican City infiltration) are a tad jarring.

Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman dabble with widening our scope of interest into the IMF team but Maggie Q, Jonathan Rhys Meyers and even Ving Rhames are quickly overshadowed by Simon Pegg’s sublime comic relief Benji Dunn. The aesthetic that Abrams elects is a grungy 24 vibe with the spycraft occurring in dark, silhouetted corridors and filmed with unsteady handheld camerawork.

In my humble opinion, Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Owen Davien might be one of my favorite screen villains ever. He speaks in dispassionate tones as if he doesn’t indulge in coffee talk with his captors. His placidly contemptuous attitude towards the composed Ethan is a beautiful counterpoint. He is forthright and matter-of-fact with his threats towards Ethan’s spouse Julia (Michelle Monaghan) and there isn’t an indication that he would be remorseful about killing her on a whim (“Whoever she is, I’m gonna find her and I’m gonna hurt her”).

I admire the notion of Ethan’s dalliance with Julia than the rudderless execution of it. The scene where Ethan discreetly tells Julia that he must furlough on an assignment is poorly hampered by flagrant green screen and a stillborn tempo. It’s the third film in a franchise with no endgame in sight. Why belabor Ethan’s unfounded desire to retire?

Since the second film abused the latex-mask convention, Abrams intelligently enriches the third film with a painstaking glimpse into how the doppelganger masks are molded and the vocal-cord synchronicity, are achieved. For me, the apex of nerve-tingling thrills is the Chesapeake Bay Bridge siege where Davien is salvaged by his operatives and Cruise is nearly flanked by drone missiles. Cruise is clearly jostled by wires into a car in the proximity during the impact and his stuntwork is peerless in its verisimilitude.

Of the CIA overlords who have disbanded the IMF, Laurence Fishburne’s Theodore Brassel might be the most intimidating in its patriotism and written with the most literary prose (“And he remains invisible. He’s a goddamn invisible man. I mean Wells, not Ellison.”). The MacGuffin (the Rabbit’s Foot in this case) is an almost inessential tool for the plot but that doesn’t prevent Mission: Impossible III from being a visceral neutron bomb.

Rating: 3 out of 5

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE 2

John Woo has been and will always be one of the action directors that I genuflect to. His movies are hyperkinetic extravaganzas with dollops of elegiac poetry (the dove trademark, the slow-motion theatrics, etc.). This is the cardinal reason I was eagerly anticipating this sequel and for what it’s worth, Mission: Impossible 2 is a jaw-dropping, flashy Heroic Bloodshed masterpiece.

The terrorist takeover of the 747 is massively irreverent. When Biocyte engineer Dr. Nekhorvich (Rade Serbedzija) is pummeled in the jugular by “Ethan” and it is revealed to be arch-nemesis Sean Ambrose (Dougray Scott) in a latex mask, it’s a shattering shock-to-the-system. This gimmick is reiterated again later and once again it swiftly pulls out the rug from under the audience.

Of the remixes of Lalo Schifrin’s immortal main theme, Limp Bizkit’s thrashing version might be my favorite. It quickens the pulse immediately once the data-encrypted sunglasses explode. This is first installment to introduce the hair-raising mainstay of Cruise performing his own perilous stunts such as the mountain solo climbing without a safety net below him. While certainly awe-inspiring, the motorcycle finale is a nail-biter with a casually cool Cruise sidling next to his bike at top speed and firing with expert marksmanship via his rearview mirror.

Thandie Newton’s cat burglar, Nyah, is a sultry femme fatale and she can be aptly described as a more adroit Bond girl. Her cat-and-mouse car chase in Seville is coyly hormonal and her erogenous relationship with Ethan is a cue to Hitchcock’s 1946 Notorious. The chemistry between Cruise and Newton is high-wattage and it anchors the film with an impassioned conflict-of-interest when Nyah is inoculated with the Chimera virus.

Chinatown author Robert Towne isn’t a doltish hack in terms of banter and his screenplay for Mission: Impossible 2 is replete with sly witticisms (“This isn’t Mission: Difficult Mr. Hunt. This is Mission: Impossible. Difficult should be a walk in the park for you.”). Due to this reason, I’ve never been craving wanton destruction during the midpoint stretch where Nyah is infiltrating Ambrose’s compound.

It’s a satisfyingly slow-burn build-up to an absolutely propulsive ending where Cruise and Scott leap from their bikes to pulverize each other to near smithereens on a sandy beach dune. For these eclectic positive qualities, I always found this second enterprise to be the excitingly scorching black sheep of the series with dynamism to spare.

Rating: 4 out of 5

With Tom Cruise committing his suicide to celluloid (or digital) again for Rogue Nation on July 31st, I thought it would be appropriate to dissect the entries leading up to his latest untenable assignment.

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE
It probably seemed unlikely in 1996 that Tom Cruise, one of the most lionized box office stars, would saddle himself to a franchise when he had a veritable smorgasbord of projects to choose from. And yet five films later with rumors of a sixth installment already unspooling at Paramount Pictures, the espionage brand is at its pinnacle of popularity.

For the first outing, Brian De Palma is the helmsman and it incontrovertibly emblazoned with his hallmarks. A dinner rendezvous where Ethan Hunt (Cruise) is accused of being a double agent is framed with traditional Dutch angles. More than once, he shifts to his most characteristic, neoclassical shot- the POV of a predator in pursuit of their quarry.

De Palma doesn’t overreach into his Hitchcockian worship on this film although the amount of double and triple crosses become absolutely absurd. While it is culpable for the attributes that are synonymous with Mission: Impossible (the latex masks, the gadgetry, the team disavowal), it is also the most tedious of the bunch. Scenes of high-wire tension like the aforementioned combustible-gum escape are showstoppers but they are diamonds hidden within the almost somnambulistic pace and contrivances.

On top of that, Cruise hadn’t quite polished his dashing action chops yet and he often comes across as smarmy in his NOC exchanges with Max (the coquettish cougar Vanessa Redgrave). Judging from these past few paragraphs, it could be construed that I was underwhelmed by this preliminary adventure. On the contrary, the film is redeemed immeasurably by two sequences that are categorized in the annals of action movie history.

The first is the crisply executed harness stunt where Ethan is suspended in a temperature-and-volume-garrisoned room where the slightest sound or rise in heat could trigger an alarm. De Palma wisely ratchets the breathlessness to nearly exhausting lengths with complications from a rat in the ventilation system to a bead of sweat off Ethan’s glass. The second is the Channel Tunnel chase which is still dazzling in its breakneck speed and rear projection for the train.

Yes, it’s mildly disenchanting that the team is dispatched early on (Emilio Estevez’s tech guy Jack Harmon would’ve been an amusingly wiseacre recurring character) and the murder mystery is an inscrutable web of deceit. Nevertheless, the film is urbane, moderately engrossing entertainment of the highest caliber and it spawned the modern-day spy genre.
Rating: 3 out of 5