Review: Mission: Impossible - Fallout
Perfectly crafted and even more perfectly executed, it's no exaggeration to say that Mission: Impossible - Fallout is one of the best action films of all time. In many ways, it's a marvel of a movie. Usually a franchise decreases in quality - not so with the Mission: Impossible series, currently 22 years in existence and only getting better and better with each instalment, offering even more dazzling locations, death-defying stunts, and deeper emotional stakes.
This time around, Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt's mission, should he choose to accept it, concerns tracking down and recovering three plutonium cores from a terrorist group known as the Apostles, who are about to sell them to their latest client, code-named John Lark, who intends to use them to blow up the world and establish a new world order. Complications abound from the get-go. Ethan and his trusty crew, Benji (Simon Pegg) and Luther (Ving Rhames), meet with a black market dealer to purchase one of the cores - the operation goes wrong very quickly, with Ethan's choice to save Luther's life resulting in the plutonium core being stolen.
The thematic through-line in the Mission: Impossible films has always been the classic spy's conflict: can Ethan sacrifice one life for the greater good? The answer has always been and continues to be a resounding no. Ethan Hunt can always be counted on to protect the ones he loves, even if it means having to mess up a mission, and then improvising a solution. His boss, Alan Hunley (Alec Baldwin), recognises this as an asset rather than a failing, and assigns him to head to Paris to intercept a meeting between Lark and a woman known as the White Widow (Vanessa Kirby), a philanthropist and activist whose charity work is a front for arms dealing and money laundering and who also happens to be the daughter of Max (the arms dealer played by Vanessa Redgrave in the first film). Hunley's superior CIA Director Erica Sloane (Angela Bassett) is not about to take any chances, tasking CIA assassin August Walker (Henry Cavill) to accompany Ethan and ensure that he gets the job done.
The dynamic between Ethan and Walker fascinates throughout the film. As Sloane points out, Walker is the hammer to Ethan's scalpel and Walker's brutish, get-the-job-done mentality is excellently embodied by Cavill. Cavill is a limited actor, but writer-director Christopher McQuarrie, who also helmed the previous entry Rogue Nation, knows how to use those limitations to the film's fullest advantage. Walker is a man of few words, so the richness of the performance lies in the magnificently smug expressions and physical gestures such as the way Walker seems to cock his arms as if cocking a gun before a fight. This is one of the greatest things about McQuarrie's handling of the franchise - the outrageous set pieces may be what the audience pays for, but McQuarrie ensures that the attention to detail is never overlooked. Think of Kirby's eyes widening in frisky delight as Ethan grabs the White Widow's arm or one glorious shot that features a vertical wall of water about to suffocate a straitjacketed Solomon Lane (Sean Harris) - yes, the Solomon Lane from the previous film.
As for the major action sequences, they are nothing less than spectacular. Cinematographer Rob Hardy and editor Eddie Hamilton work in concert to present an intensity and fluidity of movement that never loses spatial awareness. There's the single-take HALO jump that tracks Ethan and Walker from a plane to the top of the Grand Palais in Paris; a martial arts ménage à trois between Ethan, Walker and Chinese actor Liang Yang in a Kubrickian-white gentlemen's lavatory; an extended chase through the streets of Paris; Ethan running along the rooftops of London and leaping from one building to another; an aerial helicopter battle through the mountains of Kashmir; and the climactic mano a mano on a cliff edge that's cut with the scenes of the fabulous Ilsa Faust (a returning Rebecca Ferguson), gagged and bound to a chair, as she simultaneously fights off Lane and tries to save Benji.
Truly the entire film is a testament to Cruise's dedication to delivering the best action film possible, and he delivers and then some. At 56, there may not be too many adventures left for Cruise as Ethan Hunt but, if Fallout ends up being the last Mission: Impossible for Cruise, then it is a cinematic mic drop that dares anyone else to do it better.
Mission: Impossible - Fallout
Directed by: Christopher McQuarrie
Written by: Christopher McQuarrie; based on the television series created by Bruce Geller
Starring: Tom Cruise, Henry Cavill, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Sean Harris, Angela Bassett, Vanessa Kirby, Michelle Monaghan, Wes Bentley, Frederick Schmidt, Alec Baldwin, Liang Yang
