Remember the craze for turning TV programmes into big-budget movies? Mostly they were failures or one-hit wonders, unable to become the cinema franchise that every studio dreamed of.
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - ROGUE NATION
Director: Christopher McQuarrieCast: Tom Cruise, Simon Pegg, Alec Baldwin, Rebecca Ferguson, Jeremy Renner, Ving Rhames, Sean Harris, Hermione Corfield, Simon McBurney, Tom Hollander
Rating: (M)
Three stars (out of five)
Mission: Impossible, which came out in 1996, was the sole exception.
As a Tom Cruise vehicle it has proved surprisingly durable.
Of course they pretty much junked everything from the original except the title sequence and way-cool theme music.
They have also been stingy with the output, so while Cruise has been playing secret agent Ethan Hunt for 19 years, he has only made five films.
The first Mission: Impossible made a splash with its much-parodied hacking-a-computer-suspended-by-wires stunt.
Cruise was still married to Nicole Kidman during the second one, so a good part of it was filmed in Australia.
Pretty much everyone hated the third one but most fans accepted that Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol was a return to form, with the injection of new characters and stunts.
So to number five: Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (Readings and Rialto).
I went to Rogue Nation feeling optimistic but became bored because the film had become a weird travelogue in which every time they crack a clue a new exotic location is called for.
Also because they don't know who to trust there is an over-reliance on plot, while at times things just conveniently happen.
I reckon it's time for another reboot.
- Christine Powley
