Time to catch up on things—earlier this month I checked out the latest instalment in the now rather long-running Mission Impossible series. Now, this still doesn’t have Tom Cruise, Most High Prophet of L. Ron Hubbard, do an actual impossible mission like blowing up the sun or something, but it does attempt to seemingly crank up the stakes while setting up a much more expansive storyline we seemingly need a two-parter for. Here, I find out whether things pay off, or whether the series has launched one elaborate stunt too many…
It’s funny to think how the series has evolved—this isn’t the first time it’s branched out. The first one back in the nineties, then just another adaptation of a sixties TV show as was the trend at the time, was a fairly grounded psychological thriller from De Palma—and then the second one went all the way into physics-defying-stunt-mania with whatever John Woo was trying to do with it. The current phase of things was initiated with Ghost Protocol, setting up the formula of increasingly insane practical stunts and double crossings galore, but with that being a little while ago and with Cruise now looking a mere ten years younger than he really is as opposed to twenty, what happens when you have to shake it up yet again?
Straight off the bat, we get some very different context established this time around, dealing with AIs and advanced Russian military technology (pfft). We’re going straight into a sort of cyberpunk scifi territory with this one, and as usual with many a film, we’re talking the magical sort of AI, the type that can just bypass bandwidth and hardware limitations by being, like, computer magic, or something. There is an attempt to hand wave why the US government doesn’t just blow up the right server farm to end the plot, but does feel a bit funny given how real AI has proved mostly good for clogging up the internet with even more garbage instead.
Still, it is something different at least, and presents a new type of challenge for our hero Ethan Hunt and his crew, who are much more on the backfoot than they’ve been before. There is still plenty of very heavy-handed and overdramatic dialogue driving in how this new digital threat is a Very Big Deal, but as usual, the film is trying very hard to keep things interesting with loyalties being questioned, officials with uncertain loyalties, and so on. More interestingly, we finally start to get a feel for Ethan’s past—as a character, he’s varied across the films from being just another spook who happened to be in the wrong place to an extreme sports hero, but now it seems we’re aiming for a more personal resolution. Just don’t expect more than vague hints—something for the next part I guess.
The action is fine—even if the obligatory car chase, in Rome this time, reminds me of what a certain Bond flick did about twenty years ago (we’ll see that next time). Co-stars like Simon Pegg, series long-timer Ving Rhames, Hayley Atwell, and Rebecca Ferguson are all trying their best—but I’m not completely sold it justifies being yet another film stretched out to two and and a half hours. The climax, with the much-marketed mountainside jump, is all exciting, but there are certainly parts that felt just a little gratuitous, and with a cliffhanger ending, I’m sure I left the theater fully satisfied.
Like I said, it’s not like there’s no effort here—we have more drama, more stakes, but things feel just a little overwrought and yet not going as far as they could at the same time, leaving me with somewhat mixed feelings. Perhaps the finale will tie it all together—and if it delivers on some of the things we’re promised here, all the better. Still, as far as spy films go, between this and some of the recent Bond films, it does make me look back on some of the more self-contained, slightly less serious pieces of yesteryear….
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