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The latest instalment in the Mission: Impossible franchise features Tom Cruise escaping from the Church of Scientology, we can report.
The film opens with Cruise discovering the Church is a shadowy organisation devoted to global domination and sets out to escape with the help of a rag-tag band of friends and cult deprogrammers.
Audiences are told to expect high-octane legal action and explosive PR activity as the Church declares Cruise suppressive and moves to shut him down ‘by any means necessary’.
“It’s a return to the paranoia of classic thrillers,” director Christopher McQuarrie told us.
“Discovering the organisation you represent isn’t what you thought it was, and having to decide who to trust.
“Is the guy auditing you your friend, or does he have another agenda, such as taking you for every possible penny? And is he on commission?
“Those are the sort of questions we want the audience asking.”
The scene in which Cruise bugs Church leader David Miscavige’s personal e-meter to learn about his secret engrams is being described as a ‘masterpiece of tension’.
The final action sequence sees Cruise fighting off literally hundreds of people on the Tottenham Court Road, all of whom are eagerly inviting him to do a free personality test.
The Church has criticised the film, demanding to know why they’ve been picked on instead of the usual baddies these days, North Korea or Russia.
“It’s been years since we actively tried to take over a country,” a Church spokesman said.
“Why can’t people forgive and forget? L. Ron Hubbard was probably more respectable than Vladimir Putin.”
However, Hollywood bosses are unrepentant.
“You know the old saying.
“If you want to make a million dollars, start a movie studio.”
