MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - ROGUE NATION Soars As High As Cruise's Amazing Airplane Stunt

Now playing at a multiplex near all of us:

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - ROGUE NATION

(Dir. Christopher McQuarrie, 2015)

I thought it would've been impossible for Tom Cruise to top his death defying stunt in the last entry in this series (MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - GHOST PROTOCOL), which was scaling Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, aka the tallest building in the world, without a stuntman for Chrissakes!

But obviously the man takes these missions very seriously so this time out, in the first five minutes no less, we see his Ethan Hunt hanging on to the side of an airplane as it takes off. Again, there was no stuntman. Is anybody going to be surprised if he actually gets killed doing another one of these crazy stunts on a future sequel?

Anyway, it’s a pretty thrilling opening to the fifth MISSION IMPOSSIBLE which re-unites Cruise with his IMF (Impossible Missions Force) team members Simon Pegg and Ving Rhames, while Jeremy Renner watches via satellite back in Washington D.C.

Via his amazing airplane stunt, Cruise’s Hunt is able to stop terrorists’ shipment of missiles laced with nerve gas from reaching its destination and we’re off and running with Lalo Schifrin’s famous theme music blaring over the flashy credits sequence.

Then we’ve got Alec Baldwin as stuffy CIA director Alan Hunley who wants to dismantle the IMF because of their reckless disregard for rules and regulations, and recall all the operatives, especially Hunt, but nobody is giving up his location.

Months later, Hunt is captured by The Syndicate, the evil organization that he’s been unable to prove the existence of to his former superiors. With the help of a British agent (a badass Rebeccca Ferguson) Hunt is able to escape - after a torture room fight scene, that is. Hunt has a lead to pursue – the blonde, well-groomed but rat faced assassin who captured him played by Sean Harris, who’s a much better villain than Michael Nyqvist in the previous installment, 2011's GHOST PROTOCOL.

From there we get killer set piece after killer set piece. In one, Cruise and crew thwart an assassination attempt at the Vienna opera house involving more than one sniper. Another mighty sequence features a major motorcycle chase down Morocco’s winding R203 highway, and yet another has Cruise holding his breath for 6 and a ½ minutes in order to access a computer server that’s stored underwater. Yep, ROGUE NATION’s high ratio of kick ass set pieces puts every other action movie this year to shame. James Bond’s highly anticipated next adventure, SPECTRE, has its work cut out for it to top this.

The twists and turns in the plot involving a flash drive that contains all of the Syndicate’s secrets – the film’s MacGuffin - and how the British Prime Minister (Tom Hollander) and the head of MI6 (Simon McBurney) figure in the cover-up are fine, but it’s the beautifully bombastic barrage of stunts, fights, chases, and self aware humor (a lot of which comes from Simon Pegg who welcomely has a larger role than before) that audiences will most respond to.

Who knew that the MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE series would become one of the most solid and dependable movie franchises out there? It’s stunning and impressive how increasingly stunning and impressive each new entry has been. Christopher McQuarrie, who’s worked with Cruise in JACK REACHER, and co-wrote the Cruise vehicles VALKRIE and EDGE OF TOMORROW, joins Brian de Palma, John Woo, J.J. Abrams, and Brad Bird in the exclusive club of hot shot film makers who’ve performed great genre exercises in the form of these M:I movies.

The bottom line on Cruise has been for a while that whatever you think of his off screen drama with the Scientology and all, the guy makes good movies. You look at his filmography and there’s a lot of quality there. Cruise’s performance as Ethan Hunt works so well because the guy projects an air of cocky arrogance but there’s a detectable level beneath that where you can sense real fear that he has to talk himself out of. In other words, there’s a believable, relatable human being behind the action star front.

I’m definitely down with Bilge Ebiri who posited on Vulture.com that “It’s Time to Start Liking Tom Cruise Again,” and seeing the excellent, intelligent, and genuinely exciting MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - ROGUE NATION is the best place to now put that into practice.

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The MacGuffin in MARGIN CALL

MARGIN CALL (Dir. J.C. Chandor, 2011)

Most movie-minded folks know what a “MacGuffin” is, but for those who don’t – it’s a term popularized by Alfred Hitchcock, meaning an object or event that drives the plot. From the Maltese Falcon to the Ark of the Covenant to the Dude’s rug, MacGuffins are inescapable plot elements in many many movies.

In “Margin Call”, we are introduced to the MacGuffin in the form of a USB drive that Stanley Tucci, just downsized from risk management at the fictitious firm the film is set at, gives to one of his former underlings (Zachary Quinto) with the warning “be careful.”

Quinto appraises the flash drive’s content after his co-workers leave, and, after crunching some numbers, he urgently calls everybody back to the office. Senior trader Paul Bellany calls Kevin Spacey as a senior broker, stressed out about business as well for his dying dog, and the news spreads throughout the firm leading to a tension filled all-nighter.

I was less concerned with the timely play-out of how our current financial crises came into being here, than I was how Chandor’s intricately plotted scenario handled its MacGuffin. All the characters (including Simon Baker as head of securities and Demi Moore as head of risk) take a glimpse at Quinto’s computer screen and are shocked by what they see.

We never see the screen, which is understandable because it would just be a bunch of numbers we couldn’t make sense of, but we get from everybody’s reaction (“Are you sure these numbers are correct?” they all seem to ask) that the info indicates that their firm is in major trouble.

The news is so dire that CEO Jeremy Irons arrives to take control. In a heated meeting, Quinto (who is one of the film’s producers) lays it out to the steely Irons: “Sir, if those assets decrease by just 25 percent, and remain on our books, that loss would be greater than the current market capitalization of this entire company.”

It is way less complicated than it sounds. Simply stated, the MacGuffin in MARGIN CALL is like a hole in a sinking ship. All the shipmates try to fix the hole, but it’s too late.

As the Captain, Irons takes desperate measures to ensure survival, but at costs that may ruin the future of the ship, and poison the waters around them.

Cold and humorless, yet still incredibly involving, MARGIN CALL takes us into the scary isolated heart of Wall Street before the rest of us had any clue as to what was going down. Its flawless cast (particularly Quinto and Spacey, who does his best work in ages), and intense tone kept me compelled from start to finish, even when I could see right through its MacGuffin.


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