About six months ago, during a commercial break on Super Bowl Sunday, I saw one of the day’s best movie trailers announcing Mission: Impossible – Fallout. While the trailer itself, it turns out, incorporates a lot of footage that didn’t seem to make the final theatrical cut (it can be added to the recent heap of trailers that seem to be going out of their way to be misleading, which may deserve its own post), I knew as a fan of the franchise and a fan of action movies in general that I’d be checking it out during the summer. Last week, director Christopher McQuarrie‘s (The Usual Suspects, Rogue Nation, Edge of Tomorrow) labor of love was finally laid bare before me, with he and franchise star Tom Cruise improving the already-winning formula they’d crafted for Rogue Nation and creating possibly my favorite film in the series yet – perhaps second only to J.J. Abrams‘ Mission: Impossible III.
Ethan Hunt with his ride or dies.
When I wrote my few customary notes while walking out of the theater, with the percussive yet familiar jaunt of Lorne Balfe‘s score playing over the credits to the rest of the audience filing out, the first thing I wrote down is that this movie, and better yet this entire Mission: Impossible boondoggle, would be nothing without Tom Cruise – and to be clear, I feel like that can be taken as both a good and a bad thing. The good: with Tom’s involvement comes a guarantee of at least two absolutely absurd setpieces per installment, not to mention the ability to do a lot of close shots in driving/motorcycle/stunt scenes because of Cruise’s downright insane commitment to the art form of practical effects and stunt driving/flying. The not-all-that bad bad: the series is being forced to continually attempt to top itself with these stunts, and realism (if that’s important to any fans of the franchise, and I think it just may be) is being sacrificed, along with – at times – plot and character development. It’s amazing just to think that Fallout was able to match or top the extravagance of Ethan Hunt clinging to the side of a plane attempting takeoff in Rogue Nation, but I think they managed it, and I can’t imagine what they’ll have to do in Mission: Impossible‘s seventh film to top a HALO jump, a helicopter collision, a high-speed motorcycle chase around the Arc du Triomphe…well, you get it. This movie is nuts.
It’s not quite as ridiculous as the motorcycle scene(s) from MI2, but it’s close.
The cast of Fallout features most of the usual suspects, and in fact has more returning characters than any other installment in the series. Of course, there’s the ineffable and clearly at least partially insane Tom Cruise returning as the franchise’s tentpole badass Ethan Hunt, and he’s joined by a few returning members of his typical crew: Simon Pegg, who you may be more likely to know from such comedies as Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead, returns as Benji, the archetypical computer guy turned field agent, and Ving Rhames – the only other actor to appear in all of the films aside from Cruise himself – returns as Hunt’s trusted sidekick Luther Stickel. Truly notable about Fallout‘s cast of characters, though, is the return of a few characters from previous films who were likely assumed by the franchise’s audience to be one-offs: Rebecca Ferguson, Sean Harris, and Alec Baldwin return in their roles from Rogue Nation as IMF ally and MI6 agent Ilsa Faust, primary antagonist Solomon Lane, and Director Hundley, respectively, and we even see a reappearance of Ethan’s former wife Julia – played by Michelle Monaghan – from MI3. As for new fixtures, Henry Cavill headlines the Mission: Impossible greenhorns as overly brash CIA agent-slash-jackhammer August Walker, with Angela Bassett and Vanessa Kirby also joining up with the franchise in the small roles of CIA Director Sloan and the White Widow. These new characters have the primary function of bashing the IMF’s seemingly untenable and silly “Halloween mask” methods, favoring more conventional techniques for gathering information and/or saving the world, but are soon enough made to eat an enormous amount of crow by the practiced hands of Hunt and his allies, whose cloak-and-dagger teamwork seems at most times to be second to none.
Star-crossed super-spy lovers? Or all-to-capable romantically charged frenemies?
The return of so many characters allows for Fallout to do a few positive things: first, it allows the film to stand out in at least one way from all of its predecessors in the way of forming a semblance of continuity. Second, it allows the film to avoid wasting any more time than it has to on character exposition and instead focus on both developing those existing characters (something the franchise rarely does – the relationship between Hunt and Faust is specifically explored in a depth that’s strikingly uncommon for the setting) and packing in as many action setpieces as the 147 minutes of film allotted would allow. At that runtime, it’s the longest installment yet, and it somehow manages to be shamelessly and unrelentingly nonstop, stringing together setpiece after chase after setpiece, switching to a relatively low-gear scene to reveal numerous double agents, and then repeating. What’s clear is that Fallout is absolutely fantastic if the metric of action per minute is to be considered, and the extremely fast pace of the film – a pace that pretty much has you holding your breath for longer than any doctor would ever recommend – makes it a near-perfect summer blockbuster. Don’t be surprised if you find yourself either laughing or exclaiming various expletives during a number of the film’s more frenetic sequences – it seems to be what Messrs. McQuarrie and Cruise want from you.
Cruise spent a year training to pilot a helicopter for this film – all so he could hang himself from the outside of one.
With all that said, I’ll relegate any remotely negative things I have to say about this movie to this penultimate paragraph, but be warned, there’s not much of that. I mean, look – these movies are pretty formulaic at this point. Most of it is just window dressing for ridiculous stunts, and there’s not a whole lot to be had in the way of meaningful plotting – I’m sure if Fallout‘s plot were examined, it wouldn’t be hard to find holes the size of Texas – but it still does a better job with scripting than a heck of a lot of action movies do. Most of the “twists” can be easily seen miles away by anyone who has watched a Mission: Impossible movie – if you didn’t expect at least one of the mask removal moments, then you’re clearly a newcomer to the franchise – but that doesn’t make them at all less fun to watch unfold. Simply put, a huge amount of it rides on Cruise’s madness/talent/dedication/charisma, much in the same way that I wrote about how Skyscraper’s failure falls squarely on the massive shoulders of Dwayne Johnson. Even though Cruise’s shoulders are much more reasonably sized, they’re certainly large enough for the weight of the franchise to sit on comfortably, and in spite of his getting long in the tooth, there seems to be much more to come before the IMF is shuttered. My hope is that McQ and Cruise combine forces again for the seventh installment, but as of now there’s no word yet.
Tom Cruise milliseconds before shattering his ankle for a movie franchise.
All told, Mission: Impossible – Fallout is exactly the heart-stopping thrill ride that it bills itself as, and so far it’s probably the best movie I’ve seen this summer. If you can handle two straight hours of action and Tom Cruise’s asymmetric smile, then it’s without a doubt worth watching.
Tuesdays with Cory 