'Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation': Latest News, Trailer and Reviews
The fifth installment of the Mission: Impossible film franchise could be the summer's breakout blockbuster, eclipsing fellow frontrunners Jurassic World and Terminator: Genisys, both of which didn't quite capture the essence of their earlier films.
Tom Cruise returns for Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation as Ethan Hunt, the series' heroic secret agent and all-around badass. Other famous faces include Alec Baldwin as CIA head Alan Huntley, Jeremy Renner as Brandt and Simon Pegg as Benji. Rebecca Ferguson plays Ilsa Faust, the movie's femme fatale.
The movie was directed by Christopher McQuarrie, the screenwriter behind the Oscar-winning The Usual Suspects as well as several Cruise-centric films such as Valkyrie, Edge of Tomorrow and Jack Reacher.
Rogue Nation is scheduled for a North American release on Friday, July 31.
What to expect from the latest Mission: Impossible: The movie has all of the ingredients we'd expect from the franchise: action, stunts, explosions and a few laughs, to boot. Exhilarating, edge-of-the-seat moments are the name of the game with Rogue Nation, and moviegoers can expect one epic chase scene after another, according to Rolling Stone.
The film jumps headfirst into the action, opening mid-mission with Cruise clinging to the side of a cargo plane during takeoff, Deadline reported. The movie's plot centers on the shuttering of the Impossible Mission Force and Cruise trying to save it from extinction. At the same time, the organization faces its biggest foe yet: a terrorist group known as the Syndicate hellbent on world domination.
Unfortunately, a 10-minute segment featuring Baldwin was reportedly left on the cutting room floor, according to slashfilm.com. The scene featured Benji (Simon Pegg) donning a latex mask of Baldwin's face.
The reviews are in. Many critics were thrilled with the film, finding it, as Forbes put it, "better than Bond, better than Bourne."
"This is the most explicitly cloak-and-dagger installment since the 1996 original," Scott Mendelson wrote for Forbes. "While it's not nearly as dark and/or cynical, it has a certain sense of 'What is the point of all this spy games nonsense?' pessimism that made the original film feel like Mission: Impossible filtered through John Le Carre."
Others said the film didn't exactly push the envelope and may have been too predictable for its own good. "The movie...is a lot fun, with silly, suspenseful missions, espionage fantasy and enough humor to poke fun at itself," Daniel Krupa wrote for IGN Entertainment. "Rogue Nation was perhaps an opportunity to advance the series, but nothing much changes for Ethan. It's a ride, an often exhilarating one, but ultimately like most rides it ends exactly where it began."
Cruise tweeted his support for the film on Tuesday:
Get a glimpse of all the action in Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation with the trailer.
