Directed by JJ Abrams

JJ Abrams’ entry to the series picks up a few years later with Ethan happily retired as a field agent and working as a trainer. He’s engaged to be married to medical professional Julia Meade (Michelle Monaghan) and ready for civilian life. Until Lindsey Farris (Keri Russell), his protégé, disappears in the field…

From the bravura opening of a panicking Ethan frantically begging for, and failing to save, Julia’s life this movie instantly feels different. The hypercompetent Hunt has never lost, never been outnumbered or outgunned and here he’s all those things. Then the flashback hits. It’s standard issue Abrams; structurally fun, ambitious and full of pulpy energy.

It’s also the first Mission: Impossible movie to remember this is a team franchise. Ving Rhames’ iconic Luther, a fixture from the start, is joined by Simon Pegg’s nervy I.T. guy Benji and the first two in a series of rotating cast members. This time round it’s Maggie Q as infiltration specialist Zhen Lei and Jonathan Rhys Meyers as pilot Declan Gormley. Both are great fun, and they bring a sparky energy to the movie that the last one especially sorely lacked.

The villain this time is excellent too. The late great Phillip Seymour Hoffman plays Owen Davian, an arms dealer whose colossal intellectual power and ruthlessness make him the first villain of the series who feels genuinely threatening. Combined with the stakes put in place by the opening scene we know Ethan’s going to go through Hell. Seeing him do that and survive is far more exciting than the slow motion action of the previous movie, and humanises him in a way Cruise’s characters often need. The central concept is great too, as Davian chases down the Rabbit’s Foot, an unknown but enormously powerful device that everyone will kill for but no one knows quite what it is.

Plus this one is chock full of excellent set pieces. There’s a Vatican break in which is enormously good fun, a plane interrogation that feels like it’s about ten seconds from going entirely south and a genuinely brilliant hostage extraction which is devious, smart, very violent and full of classic IMF improvising. Throw in an iconic first appearance for Simon Pegg’s Benji Dunn, Billy Crudup and Lawrence Fishburne stealing the show as senior agents and you almost forget this is a movie powered by dead women, a problem the series never quite escapes. This time round at least one of those deaths has consequence and meaning.

Verdict: Overall, this is an underrated entry in the series. Ambitious, fun and sets up everything that follows. 9/10

Alasdair Stuart

 

Highlights: The Julia plot’s honestly lovely, Greg Grunberg’s cameo, Fishburne and Crudup, the Vatican sequence, Lindsey’s hostage extraction, Benji’s anti-God speech. This one’s a GOOD time.