Dearest Blog: Thanks to an early dismissal yesterday, I was able to
get out to see Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation on opening day.
Spoiler level here will be mild, nothing you wouldn't know from the trailers.
After
the IMF is disbanded and its agents forced to report to the CIA, Ethan
Hunt's crew has to go off-book to battle the evil Syndicate.
There
are two things regular reader(s) already know I'm going to say about
Mission: Impossible - Rouge Nation. Number one: it's a great movie you
should go see right away, then go see it again and again. Number two:
NOT ENOUGH JEREMY RENNER! There, that's that out of the way.
Rogue
Nation kicks off with a spectacular action sequence that perfectly sets
the tone for an edge-of-your-seat couple hours. Crazy stunts galore and
great fight choreography are exciting to watch and keep the movie
moving at a good pace. The plot is well-crafted, and beautiful locations
compliment the story nicely. Tom Cruise is the very definition of
A-List, a star who carries the movie without ever seeming to steal
screen time from the rest of a pretty decent ensemble. Cruise again
performed many of his own stunts, including that crazy plane thing
you've undoubtedly seen in all the trailers and ads by now.
Not just the
action hero, not just the handsome leading man, Cruise is also a pretty
funny guy, though most comic-relief duties rightfully fall to the
brilliant Simon Pegg. Now that it's clear Ethan Hunt isn't going
anywhere, it seems the filmmakers aren't quite sure what to do with
William Brant, so--though Jeremy Renner probably doesn't have any less
screen time than the other supporting cast--he doesn't seem to have much
to do. (Renner is in a similar, unfortunate situation with the Bourne
franchise.) It's fair to say no movie was ever worse for having Sean
Harris or Tom Hollander, either. If I had one teensy complaint about
Rogue Nation, it's the usual: it would have been pretty simple to trim
this to a two-hour runtime, and the movie would have been sharper and
more enjoyable for it.
Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation runs 131
minutes and is rated PG13 for "sequences of action and violence, and
brief partial nudity."
A straight-up awesome blockbuster and
easily the best movie of the summer, of a possible nine
Weasleys, Mission: Impossible - Rouge Nation gets eight and a half.
(And
you can bet that'd be nine if it only had more Renner!)
Until next time...
Dear Filmmakers: It is VERY important that you find more screentime for Jeremy Renner. Please and thank you.