"Ethan hunt is the living manifestation of destiny." Alec Baldwin as CIA director Alan Hunley while speaking to Tom Hollander, who plays the Prime Minister of England.
Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation is the definition of a summer popcorn film. The plot is ridiculous, the acting is just passable, and the action is always turned up to eleven. It's a fun ride, that at times, seems to know that by this point the movie really can't be taking itself too seriously if it hopes to keep pumping these guys out every couple years (they're already writing the script for the sixth movie) and still have fans willing to turn up to see them.
I say that it mostly seems aware that the film is a bit of a joke (this is after all the fifth movie starring Tom Cruise doing "impossible" things to save the world), because at other times it is completely clueless as to what mood it's going for. When Simon Pegg's cracking jokes, or when the non-CGI action has Tom Cruise doing increasingly ridiculous things, the film has the intelligence to put an "Oh come on!" face on Cruise, and in these scenes it works; but other times it's taking itself way too seriously. This mostly happens in dialogue scenes where characters are trying to convince us that they really care about Cruise's character. Both Ving Rhames and Simon Pegg have corny speeches where they tell us that Tom Cruise is their friend, and that they'd do anything for him. Alec Baldwin also has one where he is telling the Prime Minister of England that Tom Cruise is the human personification of destiny...and he's being serious. Who writes this stuff? This is a movie where halfway through I had forgotten what the purpose of Tom Cruise's mission was, so if the plot of the movie is irrelevant, everything else is too. Just get to the cheeky fun, don't bother bogging it down with insincere scenes of mushy bro-love.
But over all, the movie was still fun enough to warrant a recommendation, and is definitely the funnest adult movie playing in theaters right now, easily beating out Southpaw or the hard-to-sit-through Ant-Man.