Cruise’s latest overstuffed Mission targets fate, misses

No one goes to a Mission: Impossible movie for the dialogue, but 19 years into this unlikely series of Tom Cruise tentpoles, the fifth installment has at last yielded a line for the ages.

Late in the movie, the spy chief played by portly vegan American treasure Alec Baldwin says of Tom Cruise’s deathless operative, “Hunt is the living manifestation of destiny!” If the movie were in 3-D, those words would fly off the screen in blocky comic-book type, lift up your plastic novelty glasses and push your eyeballs back until your expression was that of the most disgusted teenager ev-ur. That declaration is the “Here’s looking at you, kid” of the M:I saga. And, like the best movie quotes, it has real-world utility. It has been only a few hours since I saw Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation, but I have begun using that line to answer every question put to me, the less appropriate or seemingly applicable the better.

“How’s the coffee today?”

It’s the living manifestation of destiny!

“How’s your review of the new Mission: Impossible movie coming?”

It’s the living manifestation of destiny!

“Hey, are you OK?”

I am the living manifestation of destiny!

That’s the state of the Mission: Impossible nation in writer-director Christopher McQuarrie’s care: You make your own fun. Besides Baldwin’s self-aware bluster, new to the adventures of Ethan Hunt, you have more than enough elements to play Cruise bingo: Motorcycle Tom, Superfast Runner Tom, Shirtless No Body Fat Tom, Sidekick-Loving Tom, I Work Alone Tom, I Did This Stunt Myself Tom. Each iteration is now one you roll your eyes at, usually with long-stored affection but sometimes with puzzlement. You almost catch his who’s-that-lady co-star, Rebecca Ferguson, reacting the same way once or twice; that she flirts more with the audience than with Cruise (well, her wardrobe and stunt double do, anyway) serves both the material and the star.

Also flirting more than acting are returning co-stars Simon Pegg (too much), Ving Rhames (never enough) and Jeremy Renner (why not, I guess?). They matter less than ever here, functioning largely as on-set reps of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Tom Cruise — eating up screen time, absorbing close-ups and blurting exposition so that the man doesn’t have to do every damn thing himself, starting with producing the movie. They’re here to remind you when to chuckle or when to hold your breath during an underwater sequence. You nod along with them in approval at the warm hug that goes where a James Bond or even a Jason Bourne movie would suggest a less fraternal embrace.

The rest of M:I‘s fun depends on how much your head hurts from rolling your eyes at each absurd spectacle and every utterance made by the bad guy (Sean Harris, hypnotized into impersonating at least two Mike Myers characters; shh, don’t wake him). As you make swift mental comparisons between the new stunts and those in the first four movies, the dull throbbing at your temples may increase. Remember, however, that Rogue Nation is nowhere near as silly as whatever Paramount titled John Woo’s second M:I picture. Sometimes sequels need only avoid tripping over the low bar to appear nearer the high bar.

The closest that Rogue Nation comes to that standard — Brad Bird’s 2011 Ghost Protocol — is its prologue stunt, the one on the poster, the one that the studio used to launch its marketing campaign many months ago: Cargo Plane-Clinging Tom. The actor, we have often been told, did this practical stunt without a green screen, presumably at some risk. “I was scared shitless,” he insisted. And what a sequel that could have been, one called Mission: Impossible — Scared Shitless. But after that heavily teased moment pays off, the vehicular action is closer to Mission: Impossible — Jackass, and the fight scenes — dark, choppy, more rude than brutal — reveal McQuarrie’s limitations as a director. (The dialogue, previously cited and otherwise, might charitably be heard as homage paid to the franchise’s hoary TV origins. Most of it, though, isn’t of modern broadcast-TV quality.) That underwater bit, another thing pimped hard by Cruise on the promo circuit, works, but its primal kick — how long can we all hold our breath? — dissolves into an awareness of the editing at work and an almost equally primal dread: There’s, like, an hour left. And then three years or so till the next one of these. That’s destiny.