Produced by Tom Cruise, J. J. Abrams,
David Ellison, Dana Goldberg, Don Granger,
Christopher McQuarrie, Jake Myers
Based on Mission: Impossible by Bruce Geller
Written and Directed by
Christopher McQuarrie
Starring Tom Cruise, Henry Cavill,
Rebecca Ferguson, Ving Rhames,
Simon Pegg, Sean Harris, Angela Bassett,
Michelle Monaghan, Alec Baldwin
22 years ago a 34 year old Tom Cruise first appeared as Ethan Hunt in director Brian De Palma’s Mission: Impossible. Now, at 56, He ventures forth into a franchise he has made his own, and owns it, he does.
Mission Impossible: Fallout is everything I could have wanted in a movie. Insane stunts, crazy car chases, awesome gun fights, head-bashing, wall-shattering, hard-hitting, knock down fight sequences, and Tom Cruise being his Tom Cruisiest.
This latest installment of the adventures of the Impossible Missions ForceI finds us sometime after the previous film with Hunt and his team about to go after the remnants of Solomon Lane’s Rouge Nation of assassins once called “The Syndicate” now called “The Apostles”. They are trying to buy three stolen the nuclear cores with the intention of creating a world tragedy the likes have never been seen in order to “reset the world order”.
We come to find out that Lane was not working alone as he was a follower of Mr. Lark, a mysterious, would-be harbinger of “The New World Order” and was carrying out his wishes to tear down the old so that the new may rise. When Hunt and his team lose the plutonium, the CIA steps in to shut the IMF down unless they can retrieve the stolen nuclear cores and stop Lark.
In what has become standard operating procedures, Hunt and his team, consisting of Benji (Pegg) and Luther (Rhames) embark on a convoluted, overly complex and utterly ridiculous series of operations in order to get back what was stolen and save the world.
However, this time, they are joined with CIA operative, August Walker (Henry Cavill), an assassin that is tasked with keeping watch over the IMF team and to stop at nothing to get back the plutonium even if it means eliminating the IMF altogether.
To make things more difficult, as things spiral more and more out of control, as they so often do, is the addition of former British MI6 operative and Hunt’s some time love interest, Ilsa Faust (Ferguson). Ilsa is tasked with eliminating Solomon Lane (Harris) in order to clear her name and rejoin the British Secret Service.
And because the plot wasn’t complicated enough, lets throw in Ethan’s ex-wife, Julia (Michelle Monaghan) just for good measure.
You remember her right? She was his fiancé that he married and then became a hostage of sadistic arms dealer, Owen Davian, played by the late, great Phillip Seymour Hoffman, in M:I-3. The mission that brought Hunt out of retirement and on this insane road we now travel down at breakneck speed without… well, breaks?
Mission: Impossible – Fallout carries on the grand tradition of “more is definitely better.”
In fact I am pretty sure if Cruise has his way in the next M:I film Ethan Hunt will be fighting giant robot, while free jumping off the International Space Station back through the atmosphere in a spacesuit, as fighter jets explode around him and he has a baby strapped to him without a parachute.
The Mission: Impossible films truly live up to the “impossible” monicker and I couldn’t be happier for it. They are like early 2000’s Brosnan Bond films, but with more adrenaline and machismo and a little less plausibility. As each subsequent film comes out, I want them to get more and more insane. I hope the next film has the original IMF team that died in the opening minutes of the first film return, remember them? I am sure Emilio Estevez isn’t doing anything.
Writer/Director Christopher McQuarrie and producer J.J. Abrams have returned to hand in another fun, stupid, and thoroughly enjoyable popcorn action-thriller that kept me wholeheartedly entertained for its entire 2 hour and 27 minute running time. I highly recommend it for its utter ridiculousness and over the top action and stunts.
Your mission, should you chose to accept it, is to watch and enjoy Tom Cruise, as Tom Cruise, doing Tom Cruise things, in the most Tom Cruise way, at his most Tom Cruisiest as he Tom Cruises his way through danger, and peril Tom Cruising the bad guys all while being TOM CRUISE.
This review with self destruct in 5 seconds.
*lights fuse*
