Chris At The Pictures

Someone a few rows below me clears their throat, and suddenly I realise that for the past 40 minutes, no-one in the cinema has made a sound. This moment came as Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner and Forest Whitaker slowly advance into the belly of an alien spaceship; the culmination of Arrival’s first act. In Denis Villeneuve’s most adventurous film yet, twelve spaceships hover metres above the ground in countries across the world. Army Colonel Weber (Whitaker) enlists linguistics expert Louise Banks (Adams) and theoretical physicist Ian Donnelly (Renner) to attempt rudimentary communication with their visitors, to discover their ultimate intention.

Quite possibly my favourite thing about Arrival is that I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like it. Oh, elements of the plot are comparable to sci-fi thinkers like Interstellar and alien invasion fare such as Independence Day and The Day the Earth Stood Still, but the experience of seeing this for the first time was utterly unique. For one thing, it’s the first time I’ve ever physically sensed a movie dividing the audience. While that innocent cough I mentioned previously seemed to shake many from some kind of trance, it seemed a rallying call for an equal number of others to fidget or rummage around for another piece of popcorn. This divide was clear as the credits rolled, and personified by my party of three in particular: I loved it, another found it gripping up to a point, and the other found it interminably dull.

Its filmic construction is also a change from the norm: that looming spaceship isn’t necessarily there to frighten or devastate, but to enthral, its featureless black shell an empty space in the skyline onto which we project our fears and questions. To relay these anxieties is Banks, giving us a similar bugs-eye view as Cooper from Interstellar, packed with an emotionally-charged parent-child dynamic to boot. However, whilst McConaughey’s character was constantly awash with philosophical wonderings and scientific know-how, Adams’ is the closest we’ve come to seeing a believably ‘normal’ person being sucked into the maelstrom of military action, political uncertainty and media hysteria that constitutes first contact.

This is not her first time making a close encounter (see Man of Steel), but without the shackles of a franchise, her character is allowed a level of depth more deserving of Adams’ talent. Here, she employs what I call the Saoirse Ronan effect of looking ‘eyesore’; conveying great pain, awe and misplacement through her gaze alone. It takes an awful lot to make varying levels of confusion and fear interesting for two hours, but Adams makes it unbelievably gripping. Renner is playing the comic relief to a certain extent, but it’s more Hurt Locker than Hawkeye (smart without falling into snarky).  Plus, both leads actually look like they could do Banks and Donnelly’s jobs for real. Despite the slight, unavoidable shimmer of Hollywood make-up, they’re not glamourized, particularly as they spend a great deal of time enveloped in clumsy, eye-wateringly orange hazmat suits.

Visually, it’s a different tale. Bradford Young’s photography is polished to a mirror shine, doing more with blacks and whites than most cinematographers do with an entire rainbow, and Jóhann Jóhannsson’s score doesn’t come packed with the overwrought aggressiveness that’s so vehemently put me off his previous soundtracks. In fact, his work for here is quite the opposite: it slinks elegantly across the background before suddenly catching you out. At the apex of a simply flawless panning shot – in which Villeneuve and Young finally reveal the ominous black shell hanging over the Montana plains – Jóhannsson kicks the strings into motion, and an eerie wail sends a visible shiver through the audience.

Some dodgy CG hair aside, the visual wizardry is minimalist and beautiful, employed only when necessary and to incredible effect. Perhaps betraying that the film isn’t really about them, the aliens are nothing radical to look at. Their method of communication is remarkable, for sure, but it’s a cerebral wonder as much as a physical one, and the only special effect in attendance at the extraordinary finale is reserved purely for your brain.

As well as securing Villeneuve, Young and Adams as magisterial talents once and for all, Arrival is a critical, timely parable about communication and empathy. It’s the natural progression of sci-fi cinema, where contemporary and timeless themes collide with state-of-the-art filmmaking technology, like a classic Star Trek episode projected through the frame of Nolan or Garland. As Mr Spock would say; “Fascinating”.

Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation finds agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his cohorts returning from another successful operation to find that the IMF has been permanently dissolved. A terrorist opposition force known as the Syndicate commits to destroying the remains of the IMF, and Hunt must retain the loyalty of his team and earn the respect of a mysterious Syndicate infiltrator in order to bring the enemy down.

This is what the film pretends to be about: what it actually is constitutes an ever-ridiculous series of action scenes starring Tom Cruise, held together by the wavering strings of what was once a discernible story. As is the prevailing problem with many of its contemporaries, Rogue Nation has a plot that twists and turns and dodges around here, there and everywhere too fast for the audience to get a proper grasp before throwing them into yet another jaw-dropping feat of danger and death.

What’s weird is that the film-makers clearly know by now that Cruise is a reliable money-spinner and sheer vehicle of charisma, but spend most of the film treating Ethan Hunt more like a ragdoll than a fully-fleshed character. Whatever their faults, previous films in the series have at least added something to the character and his mythos, but now he’s just there to be tossed around the various high-octane set pieces that – whilst deftly entertaining in the moment – never amount to more than elaborate distractions from the increasingly higgledy-piggledy plot.

The supporting acts offer much more: the dynamic between Pegg, Rhames and Renner is as fresh and diverting as ever, and I grew a little soft spot for Alec Baldwin as the CIA chief running around after the bunch like an exasperated parent trying to rally Haribo-fuelled school-children. But the true star of the film is up-and-coming Swedish actress Rebecca Ferguson as double-agent Ilsa Faust, a deadly and sleek combo of old school femme fatale and modern Bond girl. She joins Mad Max’s Imperator Furiosa on the growing list of badass action heroines of 2015 as Ethan Hunt’s rival-turned-partner in crime.

For all my complaints about the paper-thin connections between the set pieces and the narrative, the former are certainly something to see. The now famous stunt in which Cruise clings to the side of a real plane as it really takes off is marvellous on a sizeable screen, and the heavily-marketed sequence of underwater chaos manages to swim the distance unscathed by the slightly wobbly CGI work. These are the sections of the film that really stand up, and it’s hard not to be massively enthralled as Joe Kramer’s top notch score gives boisterous, brassy oomph to the proceedings.

Especially considering its place as the fifth instalment of a franchise, Rogue Nation is certainly an enlivening blockbuster. But if you’ve been exposed in any way to the extensive marketing campaign, there’s nothing here to really blow your mind. With another sequel surely green-lit, Cruise and co.’s next mission to entertain – should they choose to accept it – may prove to be more than a little impossible.