Ethan Dynamite - Mission Impossible - Rogue Nation : The Bugle's Verdict

It is impossible for a genuine Hollywood buff to effectively ignore an MI instalment, especially so if they are Tom Cruise fans. Despite the repetitive story layout, and the beaten-to-a-pulp character descriptions, the American James Bond series manages to hold its own in the market, and for obvious reasons.

<GUILTY PLEASURE ALERT>

It’s the same old dynamite stick concept with Rogue Nation: a ticking clock of guns, technology, face masks and crashing BMWs, leading upto the destruction of the plans of a terrorist mastermind.

With Rogue Nation, the MI series takes on the same comic-book-meets-reality action, returning to its roots in the popular television series of the same name, with the introduction of the Syndicate, a nemesis entity for the IMF, which functions exactly opposite to the IMF’s ways.  

The story is familiarly predictable, and the stunts are getting redundant, if not less high-octane. Tom Cruise whips up his most popular persona as Ethan Hunt – a charismatic, sensitive, highly flexible (that came out wrong) super-spy.

At the beginning of the film, a US senator states that the success of Hunt’s missions has always been dependant on sheer luck. It’s funny. He had to wait for 5 films to arrive at this conclusion??

Rebecca Fergusson plays the female lead; a disawowed agent working undercover in the Syndicate. Quite the muscular girl, this one. Her favourite pastime is getting on top of guys. (No really, check out the picture below).

Sorry dude.. You're not my type. 

Fergusson quite ably stands tall next to Tom, often even exceeding him in the testosterone department.

Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, and Jeremy Renner reprise their roles from previous films, with Alec Baldwin joining the fray as the Director of the CIA.

Sean Harris, Pegg’s rugged, identical twin, plays the antagonist, as the leader of the Syndicate, giving a Bob Biswas kind of villain, who speaks in a raspy voice, and a volume lower than that of a buzzing bee. Half the time, the viewers have to stick their ears out in order to not miss out on the dialogues of the angry, blond mastermind.

Director Christopher McQuarrie, who has frequently collaborated with Cruise on previous projects like the Edge of Tomorrow, Jack Reacher as well as Valkyrie, provides a decent summer action flick (okay, a little off-season).

VERDICT – 3 out of 5 stars

Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation picks up on the scabs left behind by the previous films, trying to put out some Cruise pastry, which while not as delicious as expected, lands somewhere close in the ballpark.