Summer thrills and chills

Sitting in the uneasy chair for “Mission: Impossible,” “The Gift”

by Willie Krishke

In “Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation,” Ethan Hunt is on the run again. This time the IMF (that’s Impossible Mission Force, not International Monetary Fund) is being shut down by CIA director Alec Baldwin, who is convinced that the shadow organization Hunt is chasing is nothing but shadows.  Seems like this guy can never catch a break or just carry out a normal mission. (This might be the only way Mission: Impossible differs from the Bond movies. Nobody’s ever trying to shut down the British Secret Service.) Not only does Hunt have to save the day, but he has to prove himself as well. It’s hard work, being an IMF agent these days. But it also looks like a lot of fun.

Tom Cruise rides a crotch rocket in the latest installment of the Mission: Impossible franchise.

Tom Cruise hand-picked Christopher McQuarrie (who won an Oscar more than 20 years ago for writing “The Usual Suspects”) to write and direct “Rogue Nation,” showing that Cruise still has more than a big paycheck invested in this series. Say what you want (and a lot of different things can be said,) but Cruise really pours himself into the M: I movies, and it shows. A lot of ink has been spilled about the stunts he did himself. He’s become this decade’s Jackie Chan – which makes you wonder what has become of Jackie Chan – and his stunts add a real sense of thrill to the movie. But I’m equally impressed by the work he’s done as producer. McQuarrie delivers an exciting, fun script that is coherent but not overly complicated, and he directs with panache. Cruise was also involved in the casting of two virtual unknowns into big roles, and both of those choices pay off marvelously. 

We’ve also got a solid bad guy, played by raspy-voiced Sean Harris, who reminded me more than a little of Mads Mikkelsen in “Casino Royale.” And Rebecca Ferguson is fantastic as the femme fatale, sometimes working with Hunt, sometimes against him, always mysterious and intriguing. She comes awfully close to stealing the movie from its star. Simon Pegg returns to provide comic relief, and Jeremy Renner to suck the fun out of every scene he’s in. There’s even a scene or two with Ving Rhames.

“Rogue Nation” is everything I want a “Mission: Impossible” movie to be. Really, it’s everything I want a summer action flick to be. It’s exciting and stylish, occasionally funny and great looking. That last one seems to be more unusual these days, although a few years ago it was the staple of top-notch action films. “Rogue Nation” makes great use of exotic locales, like an opera house in Vienna and a villa in Morocco, which just add to the fun. I’ll happily say a lot of good things about the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but one knock against it is that it’s never figured out how to make a great-looking movie like this one. What can I say, I’m a sucker for action heroes in evening clothes shooting at each other inside thousand-year-old buildings.

Another summer thriller worth a look is “The Gift,” a film about an unwelcome visitor from the past who won’t go away. (The concept can be either thrilling, see “Cape Fear,” or funny,  see “What About Bob?”) It stars Jason Bateman and Rebecca Hall as a couple that has just moved back to his childhood neighborhood near Los Angeles, into one of those houses that has more windows than walls (I was reminded of the great scene in “The Bling Ring” where we watch an entire robbery through the windows.) Bateman runs into an old classmate (Joel Edgerton) who clearly thinks they were better friends than Bateman. He’s kind of weird, and he shows up at odd times. He doesn’t seem to have any other friends, and he’s not exactly in the same social strata. After a few awkward visits, Bateman tells him bluntly that they don’t want to be friends, and he needs to leave them alone.

You can see where this is going … except it doesn’t go there. This isn’t a version of “Cape Fear,” it’s a riff on that idea, a riff that turns the roles upside down in a thrilling way. Hall is at the center, because she alone doesn’t know what actually happened between these two in high school. As she tries to figure it out – and to figure out what kind of person she’s married to – the film just gets more and more interesting.

Bateman is playing the same character he always plays, except not for laughs this time. It’s as if someone binge-watched “Arrested Development” and thought, “you know, if Michael Bluth wasn’t so funny, he’d be pretty scary.” Joel Edgerton, on the other hand, is playing very much against type. I first saw him a few years ago in “Animal Kingdom” (link that) and thought, “this guy’s a pretty good actor, but he’s always going to be typecast as a bruiser.” That held up through “Zero Dark Thirty” and “The Great Gatsby.” I was surprised to discover that he played Pharaoh in “Exodus: Gods and Kings” – I did not recognize him. And now, he plays the very opposite of a bruiser. He also wrote and directed this film, and did a better job than most actors in those roles, so he’s very intentionally climbing out of the Hollywood box. That’s admirable. I’d like to see Bateman do that. I wonder if he’s capable.

I didn’t love the ending of “The Gift.” As I said earlier, Hall was the center of the film – a sort of stand-in for the viewer. But then, rather suddenly, she becomes the way that one of them is able to attack the other. At that point, she stops being a character and becomes just another plot mechanism. That’s disappointing, since it was a smart, scary, over-performing flick up until that point.