Mission: Impossible – Fallout is a 2018 action thriller where Ethan Hunt and his IMF team, along with some familiar allies, race against time after a mission gone wrong.
Wow. The Mission Impossible franchise is back and bigger than ever in the latest installment, Fallout. Talk about an edge of your seat, pulse pounding thriller. Fallout brings the action and intensity from start to finish and barely gives you time to catch your breath in between. It’s remarkable that a franchise that dates back to the mid-nineties is not only still changing the game of the action genre, it’s the same actor doing it! There are very few franchises that get better with age, but Mission: Impossible is absolutely one of them. As soon as director Christopher McQuarrie took the reins, he was able to take the franchise to a darker and grittier place without sacrificing the heart and humor of the franchise. While I did have a few issues throughout this film, my knee jerk reaction is to say this is the best movie the Mission Impossible franchise has offered.
The movie begins with the IMF team of Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise), Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg) and Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames) in Belfast attempting to recover stolen plutonium before a group known as The Apostles (members of the former Syndicate organization) can get their hands on it. While they are making the purchase from a black arms dealer, The Apostles ambush the sale and steal the plutonium.
In order to recover the plutonium, Hunt now must track down a man by the name of John Lark who is slated to acquire the plutonium from The Apostles through the arms dealer, the White Widow (Vanessa Kirby). Following the Belfast mishap, CIA director Erica Sloan (Angela Basset) orders her agent August Walker (Henry Cavill) to accompany Hunt in the recovery mission. Together, Hunt and Walker HALO jump into Paris and infiltrate the party where the sale is set to take place.
After they track down and confront Lark at the party, Hunt assumes his identity and meets with the White Widow. She then brings Hunt and Walker back to her estate where she tells them that The Apostles will agree to give them the plutonium after they assist in breaking their former leader, Solomon Lane (Sean Harris) out of his prison transport. They reluctantly agree to do so, and after successfully breaking him free they cross paths with MI:6 agent, Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson), who has been ordered by her government to kill Lane to cover the tracks of their previous ties with him. It’s up to Hunt and his team to track down Lane once more, recover the plutonium, and stop him from wreaking global terror.
For the sake of not revealing any of the extremely well done twists and turns that McQuarrie mixes in throughout, I’ll stop right there. But do understand that is an extremely high level overview and leaves out plenty of good parts. Throughout all of that there are amazing fight scenes, a HALO jump, a motorcycle chase, a car chase and more. This movie easily had the most action of any Mission: Impossible film, and I struggle to think of many movies in general that brought more action to the table. Hats off to Cruise, because the risks that he is willing to take as well as the physical toll that he puts on his body (in his mid-fifties) is amazing. He did the HALO jump himself, he broke his ankle jumping between buildings, he was hanging off a helicopter; I mean the man is doing things that make me feel queasy just watching, let alone actually doing. He seriously puts all of himself into these movies, and the results here are remarkable.
McQuarrie was made for the Mission: Impossible franchise. After five films that are chock full of twists, turns, and fake identities, you’d think that you couldn’t be fooled anymore. Well think again. McQuarrie threw me off multiple times in this movie, which really aids in giving it the feel of a true espionage thriller. On top of that, he still manages to mix in plenty of humor with Pegg, and even some touching moments with Rhames and Michelle Monaghan (who returns as ex-wife Julia). The story flies along at a terrific pace and doesn’t slow down until the credits roll. It’s amazing to fathom how exactly McQuarrie and his team shot all of the chase scenes in Paris as Cruise is bobbing and weaving through oncoming traffic around the Arc de Triomphe, but they sure managed to pull it off. While movie chase scenes nowadays can tend to be white noise, what Fallout brings to the table puts the Fast and Furious franchise to shame.
As I mentioned, I do have a few qualms about this movie. The first is the overall plot. It felt a little stale. Bad guys stealing big explosives has been done time and time again. It’s easy to overlook this aspect with how much the movie had going on, but they certainly didn’t break the barriers in that regard. Another issue I had was the general length, which stemmed from an ending that was a tad too over-the-top. Yes, I can appreciate that a movie based on impossible missions is probably going to be a bit much at times, but I didn’t think that Rogue Nation had that feeling at all. The very end felt a bit too much like a Pierce Brosnan Bond movie, which isn’t a compliment. Last but not least, I wanted more from Cavill’s character. He was hyped so much in the trailers, and while he was still enjoyable, he wasn’t the methodical assassin that he’d been advertised as. I thought he felt more like a thorn in the side, and I wanted him to feel like a knife at the throat.
This movie brings new meaning to action-packed, and is hands down the movie of the summer. I know August still isn’t even here yet, but trust me, nothing next month will be better than this. Fallout is the type of movie that you shell out the $14 to catch in a theater. You’re going to want the experience of the big screen with the sound booming in your ears as Cruise races through Paris on a motorcycle. McQuarrie kills it once again, the entire case is great, this movie will suck you in from start to finish.