Ethan Hunt is a secret agent. He works with a team of high-tech specialists to save the world from terrorists. Often, their work involves dangerous physical feats performed under tight time constraints. That, folks, is about all the backstory you need to know to successfully enjoy Mission: Impossible—Rogue Nation—or for that matter, any of the four other entries in this blockbuster movie series that was once a blockbuster television series. As Hollywood continues to build franchises on top of franchises, turning the summer movie season into a massive crossover event, the M:I films remain blessedly, unfashionably self-contained: They’re stand-alone popcorn entertainments that can be watched in any order, with only the thinnest of connecting continuity between them. Who needs a post-credits tease for next summer’s sequel when you have the pre-credits spectacle of Tom Cruise really, truly, actually dangling from an airplane on its way to the sky? Rogue Nation, like the similarly propulsive Ghost Protocol, often feels like a pure instrument of fun, dragging Hunt through an ongoing series of precarious situations. There’s a crosscutting, Hitchcockian skirmish in the rafters of the Vienna Opera House, a tight motorcycle pursuit through heavy traffic, and a heist sequence—a series specialty—in which Hunt must filch some sensitive data from a circular underwater vault, dodging a rotating crane as his oxygen supply dwindles. McQuarrie mounts these sequences with playful booby-trap precision; in one particularly inspired moment, a car blows up in the background of the shot, seconds before Benji speeds a getaway vehicle into the foreground. Mostly, though, he just keeps the whole enterprise hurtling forward, from one hit of pleasure to the next. [A.A. Dowd]
