Sometimes it’s better to not overthink things. The stripped down brawl between Tom Cruise, Henry Cavill, and Liang Yang is as direct and ferocious as this franchise has ever gotten. There are no frills or gadgets here. In fact the main gadget intended to steal the face of Yang’s “John Lark” is decimated early on when Cavill’s secret agent uses it to bludgeon the target across the skull. Not that that really slows him down. Soon enough “Lark” is back on his feet and believably beating the crap out of Cruise and Cavill at the same time, even after Cavill creates the instant meme-worthy moment of reloading his arms for another round of fisticuffs.
McQuarrie opts to not use any score in this sequence, and likewise resists relying too much on fancy editing. There are multiple camera setups that linger on the pure, visceral violence of Yang kicking Cavill in the face repeatedly, or wrapping a water pipe around Cruise’s neck. In fact, the movie believably suggests the franchise should’ve ended right here if not for the fact that Ilsa intervenes and explodes Lark’s coveted face with a bullet. But even in the aftermath, McQuarrie reveals an unexpectedly mean playfulness by lingering the camera on the blood trail ol’ Johnny leaves behind.
4. A Night at the Opera
Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation
The best set piece in McQuarrie’s first M:I joint features neither helicopters or planes, motorcycles or high velocity rounds. It’s actually as elegant as the franchise has ever been both by literally setting its stage at the Vienna State Opera, and figuratively by intentionally evoking the climax of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956). Like that thriller, here is a sequence about building anticipation for an assassination, and where the killers will only murder a head of state on the performance’s highest note.
Yet it’s in the way McQuarrie and the film luxuriate in the tension by slowly moving the characters and pieces across the proverbial chessboard that makes this truly Hitchcockian. Backstage, Cruise is doing his best Harpo Marx impression as he jumps between ropes and catwalks above a knockout performance of Puccini’s Turandot. Slowly, he and Pegg’s Benji become aware that there are not one but three assassins located at different points within the opera house, creating a kill box for their target. Among those threats is Ferguson’s scene-stealing Ilsa Faust. Indeed, this is where she began stealing much of the attention in these movies by revealing the flute she carried backstage is actually a rifle. By the time Ethan realizes he has only one shot and two targets aiming at the world leader, the movie reaches a genuine crescendo—particularly with Ethan’s ingenious solution.
Additionally, the use of “Nessun Dorma” in this sequence, with the aria shadowing Ilsa like a ghost, is so potent that composer Joe Kraemer makes it her unofficial theme for the rest of the movie. It’s a neat trick they should bring back in Dead Reckoning.