Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation

#StokerScore 8.5/10

As a kid growing up I used to watch a lot of tv in the summer holidays. English Summers are not just rainy, the amount of water can be of Biblical proportions. So if you woke up to a rainy day and there being no internet or Minecraft available to play in the 70's, you watched TV.

Back then there were also only three channels. You had a choice between BBC1, BBC2 and ITV and the programming was limited to a few, quick, morning kids' shows as there was just so much to pack in to the schedules.

So it was that afternoons would see re-runs of certain tv shows from the 60's, including Mission: Impossible with the debonair Peter Graves in the lead role. 1996 comes along and we're introduced to Tom Cruise as big-screen IMF agent Ethan Hunt and, nearly 20 years later, the franchise is still going strong.

I say that even though I wasn't a real fan of numbers two and three in the series of movies, but 2011's Ghost Protocol really brought it back with some style and that over-the-top action has returned with a vengeance with stunts and a plot of equal complexity.

This movie was actually a solid 9 for me all the way to the end, the extra half mark that I've deducted is because of my personal opinion about the movie's ending. I'm determined to keep these reviews spoiler free, just in case people haven't seen it, but feel free to message me on twitter or facebook to talk about the ending some more.

Cruise is looking older, hell he's no Dorian Gray, yet he still manages to make the action look as realistic as it can given the fact that the missions are technically impossible. That he does a lot of his own stunts, such as the one in the picture above, helps me to accept alot of what his character does too.

I sometimes get a nagging feeling that I've seen some of the set pieces before, there is one scene that reminded me of 'Goldeneye', but with the resurgence of spy movies I guess it's only to be expected.

I thought the bad guy in the movie was particularly good, there are enough red herrings to keep you guessing all the way to the end and it is a rip roaring ride all the way. That being said, when you come off a motorbike, at speed, without a helmet, you do tend to usually wind up at the very least in hospital, if not the morgue.