Cinemavenger

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Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation

Sometimes, the fish jump right into the boat.  Or, if you're not into that type of snapper, the coochie shows up at your door pizza delivery-style.  Meaning that once in a great while life serves you up a softball.   

For a movie mauler like me, Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation is a gift from the bad movie gods.  The title alone is a logic-fuck of Trump-ian proportions.  The punctuation is enough to make a junior high English teacher go back to stripping.  The assholes put a colon after "Mission" (a mission that, as in every other movie in this series, turns out not to be impossible).  Why in the name of Daniel Webster's angry glare would they do that?  That leads to the dash before "Rogue Nation," which, by the by, there isn't one of in the entire movie.  There's a rogue spy network.  It's a rogue organization at best but definitely not a nation.

If just the title to your film has that many problems, should you really have gone ahead with making the fucking thing?

No.  No you should not.

But I guess when you've got billions in Chinese investment cash burning a hole in your Hugo Boss dress pants, it's damn the wontons and full speed ahead.  China Movie Channel and Alibaba Pictures dumped so many Yuan into Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation that they topline Tom "Risky Gun" Cruise in the credits.

After the Cruise-hanging-from-the-outside-of-an-airplane bit you've already seen twenty times since the studio first started teasing it 18 months ago, Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation is a spy movie cliche merry-go-round.  Shirtless hero bound with his arms over his head waiting to be tortured?  Yup.  Globetrotting from London to Vienna to Casablanca and back again?  Natch.  Hero stalking a sniper at an opera house during a performance?  You know it.  Car chase through narrow European streets?  Mais bien sur.  The only thing missing is for Cruise's Ethan Hunt to fall for the mysterious female agent who may not be what she seems.

Oh, wait.  That happens, too.  Of fucking course.

The only surprise in M:I - RN is how spectacularly shitty these alleged super-spies are at their jobs.  Whether it's Hunt, Dunn (Simon "Square" Pegg), Brandt (Jeremy "Glorified Cameo" Renner or Stickell (Ving "LeAnn" Rhames), if they're not blowing their covers they're getting kidnapped, being followed without knowing it, losing the people they're trying to tail or getting killed.  In fact, pretty much every success the IMF boys enjoy is due entirely to blind, stupid luck.

Worst  . . . spies . . . ever.

But not nearly as idiotic as the average moviegoer.  How else do you explain M:I - RN's 93% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes? 

I'd rather watch the porn spoof, Missionary: Impossible - Rogue Penis.