Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (2015)
Directed by Christopher McQuarrie
Ethan and team take on their most impossible mission yet—eradicating 'The Syndicate', an International and highly-skilled rogue organization committed to destroying the IMF.
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What critics say influenced Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation
Here director Christopher McQuarrie, who directed Cruise in Jack Reacher, has his own Hitchcock moves - in a scene set against a performance of Turandot in the Vienna State Opera which recalls the Royal Albert Hall assassination scene in The Man Who Knew Too Much - the 1956 movie, which, like Rogue Nation also takes an excursion to Morocco.
Ethan must foil an elaborate assassination attempt during opening night at the Vienna State Opera (clearly inspired by a similar setup in Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Man Who Knew Too Much”).
McQuarrie is working from the template of classic James Bond movies and Alfred Hitchcock suspense films like 1956’s “The Man Who Knew Too Much,” whose Albert Hall assassination sequence “Rogue Nation” borrows and amplifies about a third of the way in.
Indeed there’s a sequence at the Vienna State Opera that’s a clear homage to Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Man Who Knew Too Much” that has no less than three shooters involved in an assassination plot with Ethan and Benji trying to thwart them.
Writer-director Christopher McQuarrie sets up an elaborate assassination sequence that deliberately references Alfred Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much.
During one of my favorite scenes, Benji helps out Ethan backstage during a performance of the Puccini opera “Turandot,” Hunt tries to foil an assassination (Hitchcock fans are sure to recognize several nods to “The Man Who Knew Too Much”).
However, when Hunt and the team have to infiltrate secure location in Casablanca in Morocco, you can’t help but see that McQuarrie isn’t merely echoing the location of the canonical Casablanca, that inspired the title of his Oscar winning screenplay (The Usual Suspects), but also constructing a comparable mix of players toying with establishment and rebellion.
The scene recalls the best of Hitchcock and is one of many sequences that references classic films, including “Casablanca.”
The real revelation here is Ferguson (previously seen in Hercules and TV's The White Queen ), whose striking similarity to Casablanca legend Ingrid Bergman is none-too-subtly referenced by her character’s name and the significance of Morocco.
Reserved and somehow remote, she's also ferociously confident and utterly stunning, an action-woman update of Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca (the name Ilsa is presumably not a coincidence).
The Casablanca setting was clearly fashioned around female lead Rebecca Ferguson, who’s Swedish, because of that other Swedish actress, Ingrid Bergman, who made a little movie called “Casablanca.”
Ilsa, her name no doubt cribbed from the heroine in “Casablanca,” whose real-life city is one of the major locales for “Rogue Nation,” saves his life twice yet she works for the other team.
Half of "Rogue Nation" belongs to the digital realm of trickery; the other half delivers a more gratifying combination of bodies in space, usually going at each other, along with crosses, double-crosses and settings reminiscent of everything from the 1966-1973 TV show to Hitchcock to Stanley Donen's "Charade."
The opening gambit with the plane recalls Sean Connery atop the moving locomotive in the '70s adventure "The Great Train Robbery."
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She is Ilsa (Rebecca Ferguson, reminiscent of Lois Chiles from 1979's Moonraker).
It also doesn’t help that Baldwin previously played Jack Ryan in The Hunt for Red October, and then you put him in lots of scenes with The Bourne Legacy’s Aaron Cross (Jeremy Renner) and you’re reminded of far more distinctive uses of the spy thriller genre.
"Rogue Nation" feels like it could’ve been a movie by Keaton’s most fervent disciple, Jackie Chan , who gifted the human race with the likes of "Project A" and "Supercop."
Set pieces involve an intricate assassination scheme in the Vienna Opera House that steals lovingly from Frankenheimer’s “The Manchurian Candidate” and Hitchcock’s “The Man Who Knew Too Much”; Ethan holding his breath underwater for three-minutes-plus to replace a computer chip; and a motorcycle chase in Casablanca and into the desert with Ethan trailing Ilsa and Syndicate goons chasing them both.
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Of note, too, is Sean Harris’ calculated villain, whose icy demeanour offers a throwback to Cold War era villains such as Robert Shaw’s assassin in From Russia With Love, albeit with less of a physical edge.
There are car chases that turn into motorcycle chases (drink if you’re playing Cruise bingo) as well as an opera sequence that evokes imagery from filmmaker Eugenio Mira’s Grand Piano .