Filming began on August 21, 2014, in Vienna, Austria, and concluded on March 12, 2015. The film was released in Pakistan and North America by Paramount Pictures on July 31, 2015 to critical and commercial success. In its opening weekend, it took in $55.5 million at the U.S. box office[4] and has grossed over $264 million worldwide.[3] Critics praised Tom Cruise's and Rebecca Ferguson's performances, the film's action sequences and Christopher McQuarrie's direction.
After intercepting nerve gas being sold to terrorists, Impossible Mission Force agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is convinced he can prove the existence of the Syndicate, an international criminal consortium. Reporting to an IMF substation to receive his next orders, Hunt is captured by the Syndicate, but escapes a torture chamber led by Syndicate member Janik "Bone Doctor" Vinter (Jens Hultén) with the help of disavowed MI6 agent and Syndicate operative Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson). Meanwhile, CIA director Alan Hunley (Alec Baldwin) and IMF agent William Brandt (Jeremy Renner) appear before a Senate oversight committee, and Hunley succeeds in having the IMF disbanded and absorbed into the CIA, boasting that Hunt will be captured within 24 hours. Cut off from the IMF, Hunt starts following his only lead: a blond man in glasses, later identified as Solomon Lane (Sean Harris).
Six months later, Hunt remains on the run. Unable to find the Syndicate without help, he enlists former colleague Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg), arranging for him to attend the opera Turandot in Vienna to search for Lane, whom he suspects is the Syndicate's leader. Despite stopping three shooters including Faust, the Austrian Chancellor is killed by a car bomb.
Brandt recruits former agent Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames) to find Hunt and prevent Hunley's team from killing him. Using a likeness of Faust left by Hunt, Brandt and Stickell are able to track Hunt, Dunn, and Faust to Morocco, where the three are infiltrating a secure underwater server beneath a power station. After having stolen what they believe to be a ledger containing the names of all Syndicate agents, Faust takes the drive and a chase ensues involving Ethan, his group, the Syndicate members, and Faust. Faust escapes, but Dunn reveals he had already made a copy of the data.
Faust returns to London, and attempts to pass the file to her handler, Attlee (Simon McBurney), who compels her to return to the Syndicate and finish her mission. She returns to Lane, only to find that Attlee has wiped the drive, which in fact contained an encrypted, British-government “red box” that requires the Prime Minister's biometrics in order to be unlocked. The former IMF agents confront Faust, but when Lane's men abduct Dunn, they are told they must deliver a decrypted copy of the drive to Lane by night. Despite the objections of the others, Hunt realizes Lane will always have a plan to acquire the files; believing the only certain way to stop him is to confront him, Hunt agrees to the ultimatum.
Brandt contacts Hunley and reveals their location. At a charity auction, the two try to prevent Hunt from attacking the Prime Minister, whom they and Attlee take to a secure room. Hunt, having posed as Attlee, reveals himself and has the Prime Minister confirm the existence of the Syndicate, a classified project to perform missions without oversight, though the Prime Minister said he had ordered the project cancelled before it could leave the planning stages, as he considered it to be too extreme. When the real Attlee arrives, Hunt subdues him and he admits that he had been covering up the existence of the Syndicate since Lane hijacked the project and went rogue.
Stickell discovers the file actually contains access to billions in currency. Hunt destroys the file and tells Lane he memorized the data, in order to force Lane to release Dunn and Faust in exchange for what he knows. Dunn escapes to Stickell and Brandt while Ethan and Faust are chased by Vinter and his men across the streets of London where they are separated. Faust kills Vinter in a knife fight while Ethan draws Lane into the open and lures him into a tunnel system revealed to be a bulletproof cell where he is gassed, like he did to Ethan at the beginning of the film, and taken into custody.
Sometime later, Hunley and Brandt return to the oversight committee, where Hunley secures the reinstatement of the IMF, claiming that his previous efforts to have it disbanded were all to allow Hunt to go undercover. The committee, though skeptical, approves, and outside the chambers, Brandt addresses Hunley as "Mr. Secretary".
