Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation is a film that sets a new precedent for excellence in the Mission Impossible series. A feat that is surprisingly rather difficult to accomplish as, upon reflection, I realized that they are all really quite good. To accomplish being so damn exceptional, Rogue Nation manages to succeed on every level. The script is tight, witty, and self aware. The action is intense and spectacular without becoming unbelievable. The performances are delightful and engaging. And the cinematography (a particular passion of mine) is, simply put, beautiful. The end result is a gorgeous spy thriller that achieves everything 2012’s tremendously overblown Skyfall tried to do.

Rogue Nation was written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie. If the name is not familiar to you, he is the same man who wrote The Usual Suspects. If The Usual Suspects is not familiar to you, stop reading this review immediately and go watch it. The key to any good film is a good script, and McQuarrie’s script twists and turns with both the elegance and balance of a ballerina. The story follows, once again, Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt as he pursues a nefarious international criminal syndicate known as… The Syndicate. Joining him are familiar faces Jeremy Renner, Simon Pegg, and Ving Rhames, as well as new comers Rebecca Ferguson and Alec Baldwin (albeit as a pseudo-antagonist).

Let me interject for a moment to give my personal opinion of Tom Cruise. Is he a hit-or-miss actor who has starred in some truly awful films? Yes. Is he a Scientologist who therefore believes that negative emotions are the result of alien souls being trapped in our bodies after being nuked from space? Undoubtedly. But did he really actually for reals strap himself onto a plane and hang onto it for this film? You’re god damn right he did. Tom Cruise is perfect for the role of Ethan Hunt. He plays him with a wry sense of fun counterbalanced with a relentless intensity of drive and purpose that makes the character really blossom. The perpetually dour Daniel Craig’s James Bond should take notes. One would think that endless martinis and trysts with gorgeous women would make a body cheerful but apparently not. But I digress.

Opposite of Cruise is the leader of The Syndicate, Solomon Lane, played by Sean Harris. Harris’s performance is my favorite part about this movie. He plays Lane as one of the best villains I can remember. On par with Javier Bardem’s Anton Chigurgh from No Country for Old Men or Christoph Waltz’s Hans Landa from Inglorious Bastards. So many villains in films of this genre come across as impotent buffoons whose convoluted schemes only succeed because it is necessary for them to succeed in order to advance the plot of the film. Solomon Lane is not an impotent buffoon. He is a devious and capable villain, a chess master who is always one move ahead. Having a villain of this caliber gives the film a real sense of danger and urgency and Sean Harris’s depiction of Lane as a soft-spoken, slightly effeminate, perpetually grimacing, and intensely polite psychopath gives gravity to the character that McQuarrie wrote.

As the action jumps around the globe, from Belarus to London to Casa Blanca to Vienna, the plot weaves its way through Ethan Hunt’s impossible mission. All of it is framed in Robert Elswit’s stunning cinematography. A locked room being filled with white smoke, a chase through an ongoing opera, a knife fight under streetlights. Those are just a few examples of scenes with top notch use of color, lighting, and mise en scene. Unsurprising really, as Elswit is also responsible for the cinematography of There Will Be Blood and Nightcrawler.

It has become rare (although increasingly less so with this film and the latest Mad Max) for a summer action flick to also be a good film. Rogue Nation is absolutely a good film. It transcends the simple fun of the action genre by putting all of the vital pieces of a film into place. It has a tongue-in-cheek self awareness that doesn’t push itself into becoming too campy performed to perfection by the entire cast and crew. I’m still flabbergasted with just how good it was, and heartily recommend that you see it at.

Verdict: 9.5/10