July 23, 2015 (Vienna State Opera)
July 31, 2015 (United States)
Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation is a 2015 American action spy film written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie from a story by McQuarrie and Drew Pearce. It is the sequel to Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011) and the fifth installment in the Mission: Impossible film series. It stars Tom Cruise, Jeremy Renner, Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, Rebecca Ferguson, Sean Harris and Alec Baldwin. It follows Impossible Missions Force agent Ethan Hunt (Cruise) and his team, who, subsequent to their disbandment and Hunt's pursuit by the Central Intelligence Agency, must fight The Syndicate, an international group of rogue government agents.
McQuarrie, who completed uncredited rewrites for Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, was announced as the director of Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation in August 2013. The returns of Cruise, Renner, Pegg and Rhames were confirmed by July 2014 while the screenplay was also developed by Pearce and Will Staples; it was ultimately solely credited to McQuarrie, with Pearce receiving story credit. Ferguson, Harris and Baldwin rounded out the cast that October. Principal photography was from August 2014 to March 2015, in locations including Vienna, Casablanca, London, and at Leavesden Studios in Hertfordshire. The film's official title was revealed in March 2015.
Originally scheduled for worldwide release on December 25, 2015, it premiered at the Vienna State Opera (one of its filming locations) on July 23, 2015, and was theatrically released in the US by Paramount Pictures a week later. It received widespread critical acclaim, with praise for its action sequences, performances (particularly those of Cruise, Pegg, and Ferguson), screenwriting, and direction. It grossed $683 million worldwide, becoming the eighth-highest-grossing film of 2015 and the then-second-highest-grossing film in the franchise. A sequel, Mission: Impossible – Fallout, was released in July 2018, to similar universal acclaim.
Storyline
IMF Agent Ethan Hunt intercepts a shipment of nerve gas being moved from Minsk by The Syndicate, a secret consortium of rogue field operatives from various intelligence agencies that he has been tracking. At an IMF station in London, The Syndicate compromises the debrief. While being gassed unconscious, he is forced to watch a blonde man wearing glasses kill the station operative.
In Washington D.C., CIA Director Alan Hunley convinces a Senate committee to decommission and assimilate the IMF into the CIA due to their destructive events in Russia. Agents Benji Dunn and William Brandt are forced to work for the CIA under strict scrutiny. Ethan awakes and is tortured by ex-KGB agent Janik "Bone Doctor" Vinter. He escapes with the help of Ilsa Faust, an undercover British MI6 agent. Six months later, Hunt, a wanted fugitive, covertly passes information about The Syndicate to Benji and arranges his tickets to Turandot, performed at the Vienna State Opera. Upon Benji's arrival in Vienna, Ethan asks him to help track down the blonde man who killed the IMF station operative in London.
At the opera, they encounter Faust and several other Syndicate agents there to assassinate the Chancellor of Austria. Ethan prevents the hit and escapes with Faust, only to witness the Chancellor being killed by a car bomb. Chased by Syndicate agents, Ethan and Benji are forced to release Faust to protect her cover. Hunley blames both Ethan and Benji for the assassination and orders the Special Activities Division to capture or kill them both. Brandt convinces former IMF agent Luther Stickell to help him locate both Ethan and Benji before the CIA does.
Ethan and Benji find Faust in Casablanca, where she identifies Ethan's suspect as the rogue MI6 agent, Solomon Lane, who is the leader of The Syndicate. The three then infiltrate an underwater vault beneath a power plant to retrieve a digital ledger stolen from Lane that purportedly contains the names of all Syndicate operatives. However, Faust flees with the data to London and meets her handler, MI6 Chief Atlee, who discreetly deletes the data and forces her to continue her undercover assignment.
Later, Benji and Ethan are found by Stickell and Brandt. Stickell discovers that the data, which was copied by Benji earlier before finding Faust, is an encrypted British government virtual red box that requires the biometrics of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom to unlock it. They all travel to London, but Lane's men abduct Benji during the team's meeting with Faust at King's Cross railway station and use him to blackmail Ethan into decrypting and delivering the data to him. Despite Brandt's protests, Ethan accepts the mission. Brandt secretly reveals their location to Hunley.
In Oxford, Hunley, Brandt, and Hunt (disguised as Atlee) meet the Prime Minister, who confirms that The Syndicate was a secret project proposed by Atlee to recruit former intelligence agents and perform missions without oversight and zero accountability, which the Prime Minister unequivocally rejected. Ethan tranquilizes the Prime Minister; he and Brandt secure the Prime Minister's biometrics, allowing Stickell to decrypt the file. When the real Atlee arrives, Ethan and Brandt force him to admit that he secretly started The Syndicate without the Prime Minister's knowledge before Lane hijacked it, after which Atlee tried to frame Faust.
When decrypting the file, the red box contains access to £2.4 billion in numerous accounts. Ethan destroys the data after deducing that Lane plans to fund The Syndicate with the money. Arriving at the meeting place arranged by Lane, Ethan finds Benji strapped to a bomb and wearing a headset and contact lens camera to serve as Lane's proxy alongside Faust. Ethan tells Lane that he has memorized the data and offers himself in exchange for Benji's safety. Benji escapes after Lane remotely disarms the bomb while Vinter's men chase Ethan and Faust through the Tower of London. Faust kills Vinter while Lane, who pursues Ethan, is lured into a bulletproof glass cell and gassed unconscious.
Having witnessed an IMF success firsthand, Hunley returns to the Senate committee and claims that their previous meeting served as a pretext to help Ethan expose and shut down The Syndicate, convincing the committee to restore the IMF. After the meeting, Brandt welcomes Hunley as the new IMF Secretary.
Also See
- Mission: Impossible (1996)
- Mission: Impossible II (2000)
- Mission: Impossible III (2006)
- Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011)
- Mission: Impossible - Fallout (2018)
- Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One (2023)
- Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning (2025)