Review of 'Mission: Impossible - Fallout'
How old is Tom Cruise now? He is awfully spry for his age…Hang onto your hat this is yet another chapter in the “Mission: Impossible” franchise that sees Cruise do most of his own stunts…and what stunts they are!
In “Fallout” Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is tasked with the recovery of three plutonium cores before the remnants of the Syndicate terrorist organization (as seen in Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation), now calling themselves the “Apostles” get ahold of it. When an exchange for the cores goes wrong Ethan saves fellow IMF team member Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames) but the cores go missing. Pressure to recover the cores mounts when the CIA insist their agent August Walker (Henry Cavill) join their team, but whose true motives are far from clear. Queue lots of fast driving (Paris), running along the roofs of a city (London), and an unbelievable helicopter chase. Expect surprise plot twists throughout…don't take anything at face value here.
This film is a lot of fun with some truly incredible action sequences that now dominate this series. In this instalment action sequences push the bar higher than in other films and continuing the use of some spectacular filming locations including inside and on top of St Paul's Cathedral. Cruise is able to keep up with the action without any sign of difficulty (though he did sustain some damage during filming…). Other films in the series have tended to favour action over interesting plot developments but thankfully this reverses the trend with some fun twists throughout to keep us on our toes. The filmmakers do fall into the trip of occasionally over-doing certain elements such as the “bad” agent Walker out to get Ethan (yes, we know he is bad, we don't need to keep being reminded of it) but otherwise the film moves at quite a good clip with many familiar characters making a welcome return including Simon Pegg as the amusingly often “out of his depth” technical wizard Benji, sociopath Solomon Lane (Sean Harris), Michelle Monaghan as Ethan's former love interest Julia (now volunteering with a medical aid agency), and Rebecca Ferguson as MI6 agent Ilsa Faust.
Probably one of the best MI films yet. Well worth watching even if the ending is never really in doubt…(sorry, is that a spoiler?).
Rating: “Nearly perfect, but not quite”
Review Date: 2018-08-09
Directed by: Christopher McQuarrie
Studio: Paramount Pictures
Year: 2018
Length: 147 minutes
Genre: Action/Adventure
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4912910/