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MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – FALLOUT
Director: Christopher McQuarrie Cast: Tom Cruise, Henry Cavill, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Vanessa Kirby, Sean Harris, Alec Baldwin, Angela Bassett, Michelle Monaghan, Wes Bentley MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 2:27 Release Date: 7/27/18 |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | July 26, 2018 While watching Mission: Impossible – Fallout, it's inevitable that you'll find yourself asking, "How did they do that?" Well, as with the majority of the stunts and action sequences in this series, the answer is more than likely that they actually did whatever you're watching. Yes, this means that Tom Cruise actually performed a HALO (High Altitude, Low Open) jump at about 30,000 feet. Yes, this means that Cruise leapt across rooftops for a clever chase sequence (and, rather notably, broke his ankle during one jump—the effects of which we can see when he climbs the building and limps out of frame). Yes, that's Cruise riding a motorcycle through the streets of Paris at high speeds, and indeed, that's Cruise flying a helicopter through the valleys and mountains of Kashmir. The series, which shows little to no signs of slowing down by the end of this sixth installment, came into its own with the fourth film, when it really started pushing the limits of practical stunt work involving one of the most recognizable movie stars in the world. As you might recall, Cruise climbed up and ran down the Burj Khalifa, the tallest skyscraper in the world, in that one, which seemed like the most dangerous thing that a movie star would be allowed to do during a Hollywood production. Then he hung on to the side of a plane as it took off in the fifth one, and we had to be thinking that stunt would be limit. Here, we're pretty much assured that Cruise and whatever filmmaker takes the reins of a given entry in this series have no limits. Writer/director Christopher McQuarrie makes no excuses for what he's doing here. The plot is, perhaps, the most perfunctory of the series thus far—a race against time to stop a group of terrorists from detonating a pair of nuclear bombs. The characters exist to explain and re-explain why they're going from one place to the next in order to stop those terrorists and defuse those bombs. There are some apparent betrayals and revelations of double agents here, because that's what we expect in a spy story. Even those twists are so predictable that the secret central villain might as well be wearing a sign that says, "I'm the bad guy," from his first appearance. It's the first time in a while that one could say that an installment in this series is routine and, at times, bordering on dull. We've seen the particulars of this plot so many times—even within the course of this franchise—that it'd be tempting to say that McQuarrie isn't even trying. Then we get one of the film's action sequences, and all of the routine, all of the familiar spy craft, all of the redundant exposition, and all of the film's obvious shortcomings fade away. That's the entire point, and in a way, this entry, while nowhere near the best of the series, might serve as the perfect distillation of what we expect from a Mission: Impossible movie. McQuarrie basically has cobbled together a greatest-hits compilation of familiar themes—from an elaborate game of tricking a bad guy into giving up key information to the constant feeling that nobody can be trusted—and action beats. We've seen the car chase and the footrace and the shootout and Cruise's super-spy Ethan Hunt hanging from assorted things too many times to recall in this series. Even though it was over two decades ago, one might remember that Hunt went up against a helicopter in the first film. The plot and the characters are merely an excuse to get us to the spectacle. That has been the case for this series for the past, now, three films, so we're used to it. The excuse seems flimsier than ever in this entry, but to counterbalance that fact, the spectacle is, perhaps, the best the series has cooked up so far. We've seen it all before, but we haven't seen it done on this level, at this scale, and with such obvious peril for everyone involved. The plot itself has Hunt, as well as his team of Luther (Ving Rhames) and Benji (Simon Pegg), going after a trio of enriched plutonium cores. This eventually means an elaborate plan to buy them off the black market. There are a couple of returning characters—Rebecca Ferguson's British spy of uncertain allegiance Ilsa, Alec Baldwin as the head of the Impossible Missions Force, and Sean Harris as the vengeance-seeking villain Lane—and a few new faces—Henry Cavill as the brutish CIA agent Walker, Angela Bassett as the head of that agency, and Vanessa Kirby as the black market broker. To detail how they all fit into this story would be pointless, although Cavill, whose character's tendencies toward torture and murder serve as an intriguing juxtaposition to Hunt's smarter, often improvised means ("I'll figure it out," he says repeatedly). There's a brutal fistfight in a public restroom that destroys the place with some precise throws and vicious tackles, but for the most part, the action has Hunt running, driving, jumping, climbing, and flying his way toward stopping a nuclear catastrophe. To give away the particulars of the action would be unfair and, also, difficult, because McQuarrie fills these sequences with a lot of smaller stunts (relatively speaking, of course) and visual gags. There are beats within the beats of each and every action sequence. It's almost too much, but then again, since McQuarrie ensures that we're only here for the action, it's just enough for Mission: Impossible – Fallout to work. Copyright © 2018 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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(for violence and intense sequences of action, and for brief strong
language)
