Directed by Christopher McQuarrie

The IMF are still in near disgrace, and Brandt is in Washington, DC fighting a holding action against CIA Director Alan Hunley (Alec Baldwin) who is intent on subsuming the organisation into his own. Meanwhile, all IMF agents are stood down. Which is why Ethan is in Minsk stopping a shipment of nerve gas, Benji is running I.T. Support for him, Luther’s running I.T. support for Benji and Hunley wants someone’s head.

The IMF faces its greatest foe: continuity! The Syndicate, the shadowy rogue nation of disavowed spies hinted at in Ghost Protocol, step into the light here and proceed to do as much damage as possible. It’s a nice idea, and it speaks to the series’ growing comfort with scale. Three movies ago, a rogue IMF agent was an enormous deal. Now a shadowy version of it has functionally already won. Hydra would be so proud.

It’s also a smart way of keeping the old beats of the movies but playing them on a larger, more contemporary espionage stage. The existential crisis of who the bad guy really is, colliding with violent office politics, gives us what feels like the most grounded movie in the series. Jeremy Renner and Baldwin spar delightfully and Brandt’s return to field work in the closing act gives him a chance to create a very fun double act with Luther. Likewise, Ethan and Benji are sparky and fun together and the movie gets some of its best, and frequent, jokes from the collision between Benji’s desire to live and Ethan’s desire to find new and interesting ways to die. If the Ghost Protocol team were the IMF in hell, the Rogue Nation team are the IMF in purgatory and they’re digging an escape tunnel.

For all that, the two best elements of the movie are new arrivals for this movie: Solomon Lane and Ilsa Faust. Sean Harris’ Solomon Lane is an unblinking messianic former MI6 agent who feels like a real physical and intellectual threat. Meanwhile. Rebecca Ferguson’s Ilsa Faust is Ethan’s equal in every way; a disavowed British spy with relentless competency and precision whose refusal to play by the rules is everything does just backwards and in heels. Ferguson’s fierce intelligence, physical presence, deadpan humour and authority turn the series on its head just like they do its leading man.

That applies to the action too, which is both more grounded and more gleefully unhinged. The opening plane heist is my favourite scene in the franchise, as the team (and their theme music) frantically come together to do something stupid and dangerous and brilliant. The humour works perfectly here too, with Cruise experimenting with a long-suffering schtick for Ethan that works beautifully and Pegg’s Benji becoming an adept, if still panicky, wingman. That focus on character changes the action in very smart ways, and where the last movie ended with the world being saved this one ends with saving a friend from a bomb, a nervy chase and knife fight through London and a little close up magic.

Verdict: Smaller in scope and stronger for it, this is the series hitting its stride in its new era. 9/10

Alasdair Stuart

 

Highlights: The plane sequence and the music, Ilsa, the incredibly OTT underwater ledger hack, the closing sequence. This one is REALLY good fun.