1040. Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (2015)

Starring: Tom Cruise, Rebecca Ferguson, Simon Pegg

Director: Christopher McQuarrie

Running Time: 131 mins

Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation is an American film and the fifth in the Mission: Impossible franchise. Following the US government’s dissolution of the IMF, Ethan Hunt and his team goes undercover to bring down a secret organisation with plans of creating global chaos.

It’s incredible to see how this series is now getting better and better. In similar fashion to Ghost Protocol, this fifth instalment ups the ante massively, with bigger and better action throughout, an intelligent, unpredictable and thrilling story, and, most of all, just so much fun.

You would think that after five films this would have become a tired premise, but the way that it takes on the spy genre makes it even more thrilling than the new James Bond films. It’s exciting, slick, cool and fun, but this series, most of all in this film, has got an amazingly inexhaustible energy to it that makes it so brilliant.

Let’s start, then, with the main attraction of this film: the action. Simply, it’s stunning. There are five separate big action sequences here, each lasting around ten minutes more or less, and they are all high-octane thrill-rides that never let up and make this such an entertaining film.

Tom Cruise proves once again that he’s a blockbuster star like no other, giving his all in the action here, whether it’s attaching himself to a plane, jumping in a chasm of water or riding a superbike through the desert (in what was, in my opinion, the greatest, most exhilarating car chase ever).

On that note, actually, the incredible bike chase is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the great action, but credit has to go to director Christopher McQuarrie for excellently turning this into a good-looking and intense action thriller, using great camera work (avoiding shaky cam) to make it so brilliantly entertaining.

Away from the stunts, this film has still got a very good plot to it. There are few blockbusters that couple great action and intelligent storytelling nowadays, but this really bucks that trend, because it’s absolutely enthralling to follow from start to finish.

There are betrayals and deceptions galore in this spy thriller, as well as a genuinely exciting climax, which is so unpredictable that it makes you forget about the generic plots of the less successful films and be properly engrossed in the current story.

Finally, this is also a very nice film to look at, thanks both to McQuarrie’s direction, as well as the beautiful sets and landscapes that this is set in all over the world. From the mesmerising desert of Morocco to the foggy alleys of London, this is a global journey that goes even further than the previous films, and comes out with a stunning result, so that’s why this gets an 8.5 from me.