Mission: Impossible—Rogue Nation: Tom Cruise Leads a Force to Be Reckoned With

To the extent that the Mission: Impossible film series has a primary auteur, Tom Cruise is certainly it. While the franchise has swapped out its cast, crew, and directors with abandon, the conspicuous constant has been Cruise’s presence, both as a producer and in the lead role of Impossible Mission Force agent Ethan Hunt. Director Brian De Palma imprinted his fondness for triple-crosses and audacious switcheroos on the franchise in its first installment, but one can see Cruise’s hand in the continuity of content and tone that has persisted across (now) five films. The series’ formula has proven remarkably consistent and fecund: roughly three acts in three globe-spanning locales; ludicrously convoluted heists; outrageous stunt work; and dazzling gadgetry that pushes the boundaries of implausibility. All of this unfolds in an atmosphere of genuinely lethal danger that still manages to remain fizzy and faintly tongue-in-cheek.

Cruise created just the right vessel for this sensibility in Hunt. The super-agent doesn’t have much of an interior life, but he doesn’t really need one: All that one needs to know about Hunt is that he’s stupid-brave, he hates to lose, and he’s smarter than the Bad Guys. Cruise’s prowess as a physical and comedic actor is crucial to the role’s success. Hunt gets battered, broken, stabbed, and shot, and yet somehow he just keeps going. This is the American espionage fantasy that M:I exploits: Our spies don’t stop until the mission is complete.

The latest film in the series, M:I — Rogue Nation is notable for having a relatively tight narrative continuity with its predecessor. Not only does the new feature reassemble familiar faces—anxious techie Benji (Simon Pegg), cagey agent Brandt (Jeremy Renner), and, naturally, droll hacker and series mainstay Luther (Ving Rhames)—but it picks up where M:I — Ghost Protocol left off. Although the IMF has reemerged from the shadows after the events of the prior film, it is also being dismantled and handed over to the CIA. Meanwhile, Hunt is operating independently in the field, tracking a global terrorist cabal of unknown intent called the Syndicate. This group of disavowed and MIA operatives from numerous intelligence agencies nabs Hunt before he finds them, but the agent quickly escapes with the aid of Ilsa (Rebecca Ferguson), a MI6 mole within the organization. Thus begins a rapid-fire successions of chases and infiltrations wherein Ethan and Co. attempt to puzzle out the master plan of Syndicate head Solomon Lane (British character actor Sean Harris, playing against type as an owlish, whispery fiend), not to mention Ilsa’s true loyalties.

Director Christopher McQuarrie imbues the glossy espionage action with fitting momentum and sizzle, without sacrificing coherence, as so many popcorn films do these days. While McQuarrie doesn’t quite exhibit the command of action mise en scéne that his predecessor Brad Bird evinced in Ghost Protocol, Rogue Nation maintains the fourth film’s bright, slick aesthetic thanks to the return of virtuoso cinematographer Robert Elswit. The set pieces—particularly a white-knuckle dive into an underwater computer core and a motorcycle chase through Casablanca—are memorable and impressive, and as always Cruise’s willingness to perform many of his own stunts provides an essential sense of peril. The politics of Rogue Nation, as with all of the M:I films, are somewhat suspect, given how it lionizes intelligence agencies and maintains that they operate most effectively without that pesky “oversight.” Still, viewers who can keep the fantastical nature of Rogue Nation in mind will find that the film more than lives up to the standards of the franchise, which has become Hollywood’s most reliable font of extravagant cloak-and-dagger adventure.

Mission: Impossible—Rogue Nation opens in wide release Friday, July 31.