Stasera, 23 Giugno, in TV, su Sky Collection, Canale Sky, ore 21.15 - RECENSIONE ITALIANA in ANTEPRIMA e PREVIEW in ENGLISH by JUSTIN CHANG (www.variety.com) - Nel quinto episodio della fortunata serie action-thriller si contempla Tom Cruise che torna a rivestire i panni di Ethan Hunt, per affrontare una sua nuova Missione Impossibile, naturalmente la piĂš dura finora - Dal 19 AGOSTO
"Ogni volta che penso 'ho visto tutto' e ho passato tutti i pericoli possibili per un film d'azione, il film successivo introduce nuove sfide di ogni genere - perchĂŠ spingiamo costantemente non solo le sequenze d'azione, ma anche la narrazione ed i personaggi. Per me l'ultimo film 'Mission' non è mai solo azione e suspense - anche se ci piace rinnovare questi temi. E' davvero una combinazione dâazione, intrigo ed umorismo in una cornice mozzafiato che creiamo per il pubblico. Si tratta di dare al pubblico il massimo senso dâavventura - pur rispettando il classico senso del cinema. Ed in 'Rogue Nation' lo facciamo piĂš che mai".
L'attore Tom Cruise
Con la IMF sciolta, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) e il suo team devono affrontare una nuova missione impossibile: eliminare il Sindacato, un'organizzazione criminale di agenti speciali altamente qualificati incaricati di distruggere la IMF e di creare un nuovo ordine mondiale, uno "stato canaglia", attraverso una serie crescente di attacchi terroristici. Ethan riunisce la sua squadra e si allea all'ex agente britannico Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson). PotrĂ davvero fidarsi di lei?
SHORT SYNOPSIS:
Ethan and team take on their most impossible mission yet, eradicating the Syndicate - an International rogue organization as highly skilled as they are, committed to destroying the IMF.
Commento critico (a cura di FRANCESCA CARUSO)
La quinta spettacolare Missione Impossibile di Tom Cruise sta sbancando al botteghino statunitense con 130 milioni di dollari nei primi tre giorni e vola ad alta quota come Ethan Hunt in una sequenza del film. Lâazione che questa serie sa regalare è inarrestabile. Per ognuno delle cinque pellicole câè almeno una sequenza che rimane nella storia del cinema (come quella del primo capitolo quando Tom Cruise discende dallâalto su un computer per copiare dei dati) o comunque impressa nella mente del pubblico.
Nel finale di Mission Impossible Protocollo fantasma Ethan Hunt riceve le prime informazioni su una pericolosa organizzazione che vuole diventare unâincontrastata potenza criminale, il Sindacato. Mentre la IMF è sotto inchiesta per cattiva condotta e sta per essere sciolta definitivamente, Hunt e la sua squadra cercano di smascherare e fermare il Sindacato. Arrivare vicino a colui che muove i fili non sarĂ cosa facile, dovranno ancora una volta sfidare
lâimpossibile per farcela.
Scritto e diretto da Christopher McQuarrie - che ha giĂ lavorato con Tom Cruise in Jack Reacher â Mission Impossible Rogue Nation non dĂ tregua allo spettatore, messo in continua allerta come il suo protagonista. Questa serie riesce sempre a superarsi, ogni capitolo espande lâazione del precedente, con un ritmo incalzante, sequenze dâazione sempre creative e un tocco di humor, tutto allâaltezza delle aspettative.
Il protagonista viene spinto a superare i propri limiti fisici emotivi e mentali, trasformando lâimpossibile in qualcosa di fattibile. âOgni volta che penso 'ho visto tutto' e ho passato tutti i pericoli possibili per un film d'azione, il film successivo introduce nuove sfide di ogni genere - perchĂŠ spingiamo costantemente non solo le sequenze d'azione, ma anche la narrazione ed i personaggi" dice Cruise.
La tematica a cui si è voluto dare risalto â in questo capitolo â è lâunione di squadra. A creare coesione è
la piena fiducia che il team ripone nel proprio leader, Ethan Hunt, e lâamicizia che lega gli uni agli altri, dimostrando che insieme sono una forza inarrestabile. Ă lâinterazione tra i personaggi a essersi evoluta. Se nei primi tre film della serie la squadra è stata solo di supporto a Ethan, in Mission Impossible Protocollo fantasma e in Mission Impossible Rogue Nation ogni membro della squadra ha maggiore spazio, sono colleghi e amici. Questa evoluzione si è riflessa sulle locandine dei film (le prime tre con il volto di Ethan Hunt, le successive due con la squadra).
"Una delle cose che Tom ha deciso fin da subito per i film di 'Mission', era la scelta di registi diversi per ciascun episodio. Voleva che ognuno mostrasse la propria creativitĂ , cosĂŹ mentre i film seguono sempre il continuum del genere di spionaggio, ogni film ha un suo carattere ed una propria personalitĂ " afferma
uno dei produttori J. J. Abrams.
McQuarrie e Cruise hanno girato il piÚ possibile sequenze dal vero: set, acrobazie e azione fisica. La Computer Grafica è presente, ma è armonizzata con le tantissime scene interpretate dagli attori in prima persona - Tom Cruise in testa - su set reali.
Secondo commento critico (a cura di JUSTIN CHANG, www.variety.com)
WRITER-DIRECTOR CHRISTOPHER MCQUARRIE DELIVERS AN UNUSUALLY SPRY AND SATISFYING FIFTH ENTRY IN THE TOM CRUISE-STARRING SERIES.
The theme that runs like a quick-burning fuse through âMission: Impossible â Rogue Nationâ is the tricky relationship between inevitability and chance â or luck, rather, as signaled by the brief appearance of a rabbitâs foot in one of Tom Cruiseâs more brutal action sequences. Itâs a dynamic that applies to the film as well: If the robust commercial performance of 2011âs âMission: Impossible â Ghost Protocolâ made a follow-up inevitable, then luck turns out to be very much on the side of this unusually spry and satisfying fifth entry, which finds the surviving members of the Impossible Missions Force trying to neutralize an insidious global threat, while struggling to convince their skeptical overlords that there is such a threat to begin with. The result is an existential quandary that writer-director Christopher
McQuarrie negotiates with characteristic cleverness and a sly respect for the sheer durability of genre; at once questioning and reaffirming the pleasures of cinematic espionage, this is the rare sequel that leaves its franchise feeling not exhausted but surprisingly resurgent at 19 years and counting.
Despite early reports of soft tracking, this late-summer Paramount release should meet with a solid embrace worldwide, and could demonstrate considerable B.O. resilience through the doldrums of August. Itâs worth recalling that the Brad Bird-directed âGhost Protocolâ overcame a slow start to become the seriesâ highest-grossing entry (nearly $700 million worldwide), suggesting there was still plenty of life in âMission: Impossibleâ â and in Tom Cruiseâs career, whatever personal embarrassments and professional setbacks he may have suffered along the way. After a few lackluster recent vehicles (âJack Reacher,â âOblivionâ) and one terrific, underappreciated thriller (âEdge of Tomorrowâ), itâs clearer than ever that Ethan Hunt is not
just one of Cruiseâs signature roles, but also a commercial oasis to which he can reliably return in between riskier attempts to extend his personal brand.
Or, as someone snarls in one of McQuarrieâs more amusing lines: âHunt is the living manifestation of destiny!â And if the now 53-year-old Cruise isnât quite limber enough to do full justice to that description, he continues to throw himself into harmâs way with energy, conviction and an astonishing disregard for life and limb. That much is clear from a set piece that has already figured heavily into Paramountâs marketing campaign, and which is wisely dispensed with in the opening scene: Bent on retrieving a cache of nerve-gas missiles from a band of Chechen separatist fighters, Ethan leaps onto a military cargo plane mid-takeoff and hangs on for dear life as terra firma recedes behind him â an astounding piece of airborne staging that Cruise,
with his distaste for green-screen effects and his fondness for performing his own stunts, pulls off in typically sweat-free fashion.
The sequence is at once a tasty appetizer and a total red herring, and âRogue Nationâ swiftly gets down to business by putting Ethan and his fellow operatives out of commission. Citing the destruction of the Kremlin and other extensive property damage from âGhost Protocol,â brash CIA boss Alan Huntley (Alec Baldwin) succeeds in dismantling the IMF and absorbing it into the Agency â a move that effectively paralyzes two of Ethanâs old pals, top analyst William Brandt (Jeremy Renner) and tech genius Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg), and proves serious enough to bring Ethanâs trustiest ally, Luther Stickell (an underused Ving Rhames), back in from the cold.
Still, those guys are doing relatively well compared with Ethan himself, who barely makes it through the opening credits before heâs accosted in London, tied
up and repeatedly pummeled by a chrome-domed torture specialist called the Bone Doctor (Jens Hulten). Itâs the work of a wide-ranging shadow organization known simply as the Syndicate (the ârogue nationâ of the title), which has been setting off destabilizing waves of violence, civil unrest and catastrophe across the globe, some of which â far-flung industrial accidents, jetliners vanishing into thin air â have deliberately uncomfortable real-world echoes. Ethanâs mission, which he has no choice but to accept, is to take down this sinister group, which will require him to team up with the tellingly named Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson), a skilled but relatively untested British intelligence agent who has succeeded in infiltrating the Syndicate. (For all the filmâs rampant globe-trotting, its casting choices and frequent London stopovers give it a markedly Blighty flavor.)
In classic spy-thriller fashion, itâs never entirely clear whether Ilsa is friend or femme fatale â especially
after she and Ethan cross paths with a few well-positioned snipers at the Vienna State Opera, where a lavish performance of âTurandotâ serves as both backdrop and modus operandi for an up-in-the-rafters assassination attempt. The curtain comes crashing violently down on that episode, but the movieâs second major action sequence is a marvel of precise execution and quietly fraught suspense, forcing Ethan to swim his way into a highly pressurized underwater cavern in order to lay hands on a weapon that could make or break the Syndicate. Itâs a remarkably taut bit of business (shot on the large-format Alexa 65 6k digital camera), literally breathless in its intensity, yet executed with the sort of deftness and economy may remind you of Ethanâs early reference to the great jazz drummer Shadow Wilson and his famously âlight touch.â Even when the characters are diving into giant water turbines or ripping up the
streets of Morocco on motorcycles, that intricate, improvisatory lightness is a quality that McQuarrieâs film has in spades.
While the âMission: Impossibleâ movies have employed a different helmer with each new installment, this is, notably, the first one to be directed and solely written by the same filmmaker â which may explain why, even at a pacey, slightly trimmable 131 minutes, âRogue Nationâ feels like the most dramatically sustained and conceptually unified picture in the series. To be sure, McQuarrie isnât as flamboyant a stylist as his predecessors Brian De Palma and John Woo, and although it shares with âGhost Protocolâ the same superb cinematographer (Robert Elswit), the new film has an altogether darker, more workmanlike palette, with little of the previous filmâs eye-tickling compositional flair. (And whereas âGhost Protocolâ boasted 27 staggering minutes of footage shot on Imax cameras, the image stays strictly widescreen in âRogue Nation,â gaining relatively little
from the giant-screen format in which it was screened for review.)
But whatever the filmmaking may lack in visual or visceral impact, McQuarrie (whose past collaborations with Cruise include directing âJack Reacherâ and scripting âEdge of Tomorrowâ) more than compensates on the written front; his screenplay (based on a story conceived with Drew Pearce) achieves an admirable complexity without sacrificing coherence in the process. On the face of it, âRogue Nationâ is another patchwork of Hitchcockian tropes and James Bondian cliches, as familiar as the recurring strains of Lalo Schifrinâs classic musical theme: Carefully encrypted messages are transmitted, bank-account numbers are copied and deleted, and high-tech explosives are armed and disarmed. Behind the Syndicate lurks a calculating uber-villain (played with understated menace by the protean Sean Harris) deluded enough to confuse mass annihilation with salvation, and even after heâs defeated, the film acknowledges, there will be many others like him waiting
in the wings. Everyone is wearing a mask, and not just of the latex variety: As Ethan and Ilsaâs pointed conversations remind us, these agents are professional con artists who must decide anew each day whether they owe their highest allegiance to their cause, their employers, their friends in the field, or the civilians who are always at risk of becoming collateral damage.
A âMission: Impossibleâ movie will admittedly never be mistaken for John le Carre, even if this one does feature the marvelous Simon McBurney (a veteran of 2011âs âTinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spyâ) as a high-ranking official whose connections within the British intelligence community run treacherously deep. Still, âRogue Nationâ exudes a knowing sophistication and a winking sense of fun that make it the most philosophically brooding film in the series, acknowledging the soul-crushing futility of so much intelligence work, especially for those who have been smeared and disavowed by
their own agency. âI canât see another way,â Ethan despairs as the story approaches its fatal endgame â one that, he realizes, is utterly unavoidable and perhaps even preordained. And so the charactersâ sense of defeat becomes a metaphor for the essentially formulaic nature of the action-thriller, calling into question the viability of a genre of which weâve already seen countless iterations and will certainly see countless more. Yet the unexpected pleasure of âRogue Nationâ is the way it claws its way to freedom and a sense of renewal: In writing Ethan and his colleagues out of an impossibly tight corner, McQuarrie ingeniously turns both formula and metaphor inside out.
While the most recent âDie Hardâ and âTerminatorâ movies have playfully acknowledged that their once-strapping male stars are well past their physical prime, the âMission: Impossibleâ franchise is having none of it. Whatever combination of stunt work and digital trickery was
involved (very little, if reports are to be believed), Cruise remains as deft a physical performer as ever, and projects nary a shred of self-consciousness or vanity; he is, no less than Ethan Hunt himself, an incorrigible daredevil and a consummate professional. Ferguson, a Swedish actress best known for TV productions like âThe Red Tentâ and âThe White Queen,â brings a strong, engaging if not particularly enigmatic presence to a series whose female operatives have never been its strong suit; her iffy chemistry with Cruise is kept further at bay by a story that, aside from some occupationally mandated toplessness, remains strictly within PG-13 boundaries.
Baldwinâs blustering, antagonistic CIA man lends the proceedings a welcome punch, while Pegg, previously seen in âGhost Protocolâ as a comic-relief figure with a full arsenal of malfunctioning gadgets, comes fully into his own here as an indispensable and uniquely courageous member of Ethanâs team. Renner
and Rhames are rather sidelined by comparison, though they get considerably more screen time than Zhang Jinchu, whose prominently billed, blink-and-you-miss-it performance as a CIA underling feels like a sop to the filmâs Asia-based investors, China Movie Channel and Alibaba Pictures Group. The perilous landscape of globalized blockbuster filmmaking is very much its own Syndicate, but at least on the evidence of âMission: Impossible â Rogue Nation,â this is one series whose identity has yet to be compromised.
Bibliografia:
Nota: Si ringraziano Universal Pictures International Italy e Xisterpressplay