Review of Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (2015) by Axet — 31 Jul 2015

Big production, overly formulaic bore. Where it stands in the series: first one was okay, second was awful, third was quite good, fourth was okay, this one is lame. Some idiot critic is claiming this better than Bond and Bourne. On the whole these movies are not nearly as good as the best Bonds but better made overall than the Bournes which in my book were very sloppy after the first one.

It has much of the signature style, clock ticking set pieces, trick identities, etc., but this time it's all so very, very tired! I've seen this movie before a hundred times! The plot is typically convoluted and silly. Jeremy Renner is useless and annoying. Alec Baldwin doesn't seem to know if he's in a serious movie or an SNL sketch. The audience seemed to be laughing at the movie not with it over some of the silly dialogue exchanges (Then again the audience partially applauded at the end, it was made up of at least half morons I'd say judging for some of the wasteoids sitting near me, probably professional critics looking to have a bright day and cut this dud a break. That's how they roll, it's all in the release timing, they were ready for a more serious non-superhero movie so they unjustifiably praise this no matter how lackluster it actually is. What stupid idiots! They should be all sued in class action for incompetent financial advisement.).

This whole Cruise did it for real stunt thing with the plane (makes no difference whatsoever in a pretend story, this isn't sports where the outcome is unknown, we know he was fine in real life), the underwater bit (that he actually held his breath for 6 minutes making that scene is such an absurdly preposterous account being told to the press and it's not even questioned as an outright lie is it? Michael Phelps couldn't do that on his best day.) Another is that he did all his own stunt driving, fine but then the scene goes so obviously CGI by the end that it calls the integrity of everything they are saying into question! The whole gimmick of his doing his own stunts to sell this movie is so passé nowadays. It meant something when Ford did it on "Raiders", but it just doesn't matter now. The problem was way back when you could see the stuntman actually in the frame, or you didn't show faces for that reason. Now with actors' faces digitally painted onto stuntmen or with outright digital doubles being used it's irrelevant.

I still think Tom Cruise is a great movie star and a very good actor. He should do more serious movies at this point and not this kind of big expensive junk just to stay popular and land box office. A trend amongst all older super stars and the other older ones are even more guilty of it.