Does the world need another Mission Impossible film? Of course it doesn't. But, then again, did you really need another slice of cake?

From the outset, this film is ridiculous. The realism is totally compromised, and the superhero spy skills, totally confirmed.

There's plenty of things in this movie that don't work. At various intervals, painfully awkward exposition is airdropped into scenes that don't need it.

Lazy real-world problems are literally nailed to walls, accompanied by a mournful Cruise alluding to Malaysia airlines flights and blaming it on a very naughty terrorist.

The movie could do without these things and so much more.

Benjy, Simon Pegg's hyper computer literate "trained field agent" (as he takes great pains to point out in a very odd moment of explosive self-righteousness) is at one moment, utterly hopeless walking comic relief, the next, a computer genius of the highest calibre.


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By the way, if he is the latter, why would they even need Ving Rhames? Loyalty to previous casting.

Not that Mr. Rhames is unwelcome. They are all welcome. They all fit the bill for this kind of movie. Cruise is the smug American Bond-slash-Bourne, Rebecca Ferguson is the token classically beautiful-but-deadly agent, Sean Harris is the token hyper-talented English thesp-unleashing lines with viperesque menace and Alec Baldwin, who's Hollywood status is approaching legend territory, is a powerful government man with the right heart and the wrong tactics.

It fits. It all fits. And this is the point. Of course this film is vaguely stupid. Of course it is a lumbering franchise that no-one desperately wants back every few years. So what? 

Do you come to see a Mission Impossible movie for the exquisite tension of Christopher Nolan? No.

Do you come to see a Mission Impossible movie for the pseudo-realism of Jason Bourne? No.

This movie is unabashed escapism, and frankly, love him or loathe him, few people in the world know how to do that better than Tom Cruise.

In the opening sequence he hangs on to plane as it soars skyward in real time. When his door is opened, in he is unmercifully flung and slammed to the side of a very metal, very hard looking cabin.

Unhurt, he straps himself to big dangerous nuclear stuff, (we know by dint of a helpful close up on the international sign for big dangerous nuclear stuff).

He then parachutes out the back of the plane. Now, scoff at this you may, as this writer did, but if you find this sequence entertaining, (and this writer did), then you will love the rest of the movie.

Because it is fun, lots of fun. The action is loud and fast, the spies are lethal, and the sets are dazzling.

If you want Shakespeare, good for you, but go to the Globe on London's Southbank.

This film takes London sights of similar iconic status and wraps them in a frenzied swarm of madcap mayhem.

This film is silly, fantastical and exciting. It is to be taken with a fistful of salt, because a pinch will not suffice.

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Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation (12A) is out Thursday.