espionage – Memphis Flyer

It’s been 19 years since Tom Cruise first portrayed Ethan Hunt in an adaptation of the hit spy show Mission: Impossible. That’s longer than the show had been off the air when the Brian De Palma-helmed reboot hit theaters with the now-iconic image of Cruise hanging over a computer terminal, suspended by impossibly thin wires. Since someone born on the first film’s premiere date would be college-aged by now, it’s likely that there are many people in the audience who don’t know the self-destructing message sending spies off on an elaborate and dangerous mission is a callback to the show’s weekly cold opening. But it’s the formula Desilu Productions developed for TV that has allowed the Mission: Impossible franchise to outlive the Cold War. A highly trained team of agents working for a shadowy, quasi-governmental agency undertaking missions so sensitive and difficult that their government will “disavow” all knowledge of their existence if they fail works just as well in the age of terrorism as it did in the days of KGB vs. CIA spy-jinks.

The latest installment, Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation, is nothing if not formulaic, but the movie is self-aware enough to preemptively ask if it’s still relevant. We first meet returning player William Brandt (Avengers‘ Jeremy Renner) defending the Impossible Mission Force (IMF) before a congressional committee as CIA director Alan Hunley (Alec Baldwin) successfully argues that they are redundant and dangerously out of control. Hunley puts the IMFers, including computer wizard Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg), on desk duty, but their first assignment is tracking Hunt, who has once again gone rogue. Hunt thinks he’s on the trail of yet another shadowy, elite force of spies called the Syndicate, but almost no one else believes they exist. Hunley accuses him of making up threats to justify the IMF’s funding with one of the film’s best lines: “Hunt is both arsonist and fireman.”

But since Tom Cruise is both star and producer, we know that the Syndicate is real, and it includes stock characters like the strangely cold, vaguely European mastermind Soloman Lane (Sean Harris), a Russian sadist named the Bone Doctor (Jens Hultén), and British double (or possibly triple) agent Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson). Hunt gets the old team out from behind their desks — and in the case of Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames), out of retirement — to stop the Syndicate from — well, doing something that’s probably real bad. Details like the bad guy’s motivations and the exact nature of the MacGuffin (It’s a list of agents! No wait, it’s a list of bank accounts! No wait, we’ve got to rescue Benji!) are not Mission: Impossible‘s strong suit.

What Cruise and director Christopher McQuarrie are all about is crafting high-quality action, and judged by that metric, they succeed. The “gain access to an impossibly secure computer system” sequence is set underwater this time, to spectacular results. But the best part of the film is the second-act set piece in a Vienna opera house that references Hitchcock’s climax to The Man Who Knew Too Much.

While the Daniel Craig/Sam Mendes team has taken James Bond into more serious character territory, Cruise and J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot production company have taken the opposite approach. Rogue Nation plays like a fond memory of Roger Moore-era Bond films such as Live and Let Die, only without the misogyny — or sexiness, for that matter. Even though Ferguson, a British actress making her first foray into the action genre, is captivating onscreen, she and Cruise share only a single extended hug.

Like Adam Sandler, Cruise’s wealth and status remove the usual motivations for doing a movie: He doesn’t need the money, so why bother? In Sandler’s case, the leaked Sony Pictures emails allege his films are little more than ways to get his friends and family free vacations. Cruise, on the other hand, appears to be motivated by the desire to perform increasingly over-the-top stunts. Rogue Nation‘s big moment comes right off the bat, when Hunt, trying to recover a biological weapons cache, clings to the side of an Airbus military transport as it takes off and flies away. At least that’s more fun for the viewer than watching Sandler yuk it up on a waterslide.

I’ve always loved James Bond movies, especially the older ones like Thunderball and From Russia With Love. But these days, when I go back to watch Sean Connery swigging martinis while saving the free world, I can’t help but notice how sexist they read. I wouldn’t say the outdated sexual attitudes ruin the experience, exactly, but it definitely pulls me out of the action for a moment. Maybe that’s why I have a soft spot for George Lazenby’s sole effort, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, where Bond actually falls in love with Diana Rigg instead of bedding women seemingly out of spite.

Melissa McCarthy’s new comedy vehicle takes dead aim at spy game sexism. Written and directed by Paul Feig, Spy is likely to satisfy McCarthy’s growing legion of fans and points the way to a bright future for the breakout star of Bridesmaids. McCarthy is Susan Cooper, a CIA analyst who spends her days in the high-tech basement of Langley whispering advice and intelligence into the satellite-linked earpiece of agent Bradley Fine (Jude Law). But when Fine is killed in a mission to track down a loose nuke, Susan is sent into the field to track down his murderer Rayna Boyanov (Rose Byrne) and retrieve the weapon before terrorists can get ahold of it.

Melissa McCarthy

No one takes Susan seriously, even though she’s clearly very skilled. Wringing comedy out of people misjudging her because of her sex or looks is like hitting softballs to McCarthy. Feig understands what kind of movie he’s making and keeps her, and her point of view, dead center for the entire story. McCarthy has plenty of people to bounce jokes off of: There’s Law, who is his usual impeccable self; Miranda Hart as Nancy, a fellow analyst who is Susan’s frumpy confidante; and Aldo (Peter Serafinowicz), a lecherous Italian agent. But surprisingly, McCarthy’s best sparring partner is Jason Statham as Rick Ford, a rogue agent miffed that the fat girl got the important assignment instead of him. Statham demonstrates masterful comic timing while sending up the kind of hypermasculine roles he usually gets cast in, suggesting there’s a lot more to him than Hollywood has been able to find a use for.

Spy is often funny, but it is not a well-oiled machine. The movie starts slow, only kicking into gear once McCarthy and Statham start trading barbs at about the half hour mark. Scenes run on way too long, as Feig was seemingly determined to keep every one of McCarthy’s remotely funny improvs in the final cut. There are way too many characters, many of whom seem to think they’re much funnier than they actually are. The plot is loose to the point of incoherence — I kept forgetting what the McGuffin was until the late third act reveal of the missing atom bomb made me go “Oh yeah.”

But McCarthy overcomes all of that, making the sloppy film watchable by sheer force of charisma alone. She can pack more emotion into an exasperated eye roll than most actresses can into an extended speech. I hope one of these days someone will write a Groundhog Day-level script for McCarthy, and she’ll finally get to create the classic her talent promises. But until then, Spy is a pretty agreeable time at the theater.