TOM CRUISE IN MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: ROGUE NATION

2015 **1/2

In a full circle, the MISSION IMPOSSIBLE intro looks very much like a television show: the actors appearing beside their names, and various scenes from former entries including the last one, GHOST PROTOCOL, directed by Brad Bird, which was something to behold, and then some...

But now, the IMF team is a lot more relaxed. Even during sporadic action sequences, there's not as much heated urgency to get from one point to another. And the villain on board is a pretty bad guy. Hell, you'd think he was Adolf Hitler the way the entire plot relies on stopping him, and him only...

But this shady version of Cruise's Ethan never quite proves himself nefarious enough for all the energy to point in his direction, replacing suspense with so much expository dialogue by writer/director Christopher McQuarrie that ROGUE NATION feels more like reading a book than experiencing a motion picture. And while there are some nice moments between Cruise, comic relief Simon Pegg and tough ingenue Rebecca Ferguson, it's definitely no page-turner.