After Tom Cruise (in)famously did a couch jump to physically express his love for then wife (now third ex-wife) Katie Holmes in an Oprah Winfrey interview, many potential fans/audiences cooled to him personally (his dabbling in Scientology, complete with YouTube videos of said dabbling, didn’t help matters much as well).

Despite this personal low and the ridicule engendered, Tom Cruise kept right on working, releasing film after film after film and while not every one of them have been box office hits, it is difficult not to appreciate, or at the very least respect, the fact that he’s devoted to his art and continues to work hard on each new project after all these years.  There are many actors who, after decades in the industry, have taken to “phoning in” their roles.  Mr. Cruise, like him or not, still gives his all in each new film.

Now, at the risk of sounding waaay too psychological, the above history makes me wonder if the latest Mission: Impossible film, Rogue Nation, is, apart from another entertaining M:I film, also something of a Tom Cruise autobiography.

In Ethan Hunt, Tom Cruise’s character in M:I, we have someone who is essentially a cipher.  A blank character (aren’t all actors that?) who submerge themselves into their role, in this case a do-gooder intent on proving himself in spite of the fact that his superiors (in the movie’s case Alec Baldwin as Alan Huntley, a high up U.S. politician who wants to shut the IMF group down; in Mr. Cruise’s case, the audiences) have turned on him.

Like Tom Cruise, Ethan Hunt is a very hard working individual and, despite all obstacles, will perform what’s needed (including having Hunt/Cruise hang on to the outside of a plane as it lifts off and flies around!) to get the mission done.

I tell you, we’re deep into psychological territory here.

But lest that turn you off from seeing M:I – Rogue Nation, don’t let it.  This film, as mentioned before, is entertaining despite having many of the same flaws I found in the last M:I film, Ghost Protocol.  Unlike Ghost Protocol, I don’t get the feeling the script was radically changed toward the second half of the film (In my Ghost Protocol review, which you can read here, I noted that it is my belief the film’s original bad guys of that feature were Paula Patton’s Jane and Josh Holloway’s Hanaway.  Read my review to see why I felt this was the case!).

But like Ghost Protocol, we once again have a film with a nebulous and, ultimately, not fleshed-out enough villain.  In GP (I’ll refer to Ghost Protocol this way from now on), part of the problem was that change in the script, which I’m quite certain happened.  In RN (I’ll refer to Rouge Nation in this way from now on), the villain is simply too often on the sidelines and out of the picture.  When we finally get an understanding of what he’s up to, it winds up being a plan that, if considered seriously, is way too complicated to have any expectation of succeeding.  At the risk of getting too spoilery, there has to be a better way for this very clever man to (ahem) make a buck.

Still, like GP, RN moves along like lightning and doesn’t give audiences the time to dwell on these defects.  The action is crisp, the characters are likeable, especially newcomer to the M:I universe Rebecca Ferguson who plays Ilsa Faust, an Ethan Hunt-level female agent whose nebulous allegiances we’re never quite sure of until the movie’s climax.

Thanks to the success of MI: RN and the last batch of Tom Cruise films, audiences who once scorned the actor appear willing to give him a second chance.  Like Ethan Hunt in M:I – RN, it would appear Mr. Cruise’s personal mission has been accomplished as well as the one on the screen.

Recommended.