Mission: Impossible - Fallout (2018)

Mission: Impossible - Fallout (2018)

IMDB Rating : 8.4/10 (as on 03.08.2018)

Ethan Hunt and his IMF team, along with some familiar allies, race against time after a mission gone wrong.

Director: Christopher McQuarrie

Writers: Christopher McQuarrie, Bruce Geller (based on the television series created by)

Stars: Tom Cruise, Henry Cavill, Ving Rhames

PG-13 | 2h 27min | Action, Adventure, Thriller

IMDB link

Movie Rating : ★★★★☆  

Cruise control and set-piece thrills

Simran Hans  

In the 22 years since the original Mission: Impossible, Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt remains the same, moral compass and handsome, suspiciously unlined face very much intact. What sets him apart from his grittier contemporaries is his American altruism. Bond is misanthropic, Bourne solipsistic, John Wick (though a vigilante hitman, not a hero) spurred by revenge. Hunt, on the other hand, is defined by his “pathetic morality”, a weakness parlayed in this sixth instalment into something worth celebrating.

This time, three silvery orbs of plutonium have fallen into the hands of the Apostles, an anarchist group planning to use them to blow up the Vatican, Jerusalem and Mecca. Willing to trade the explosives for Solomon Lane (Sean Harris), whom Hunt captured in Rogue Nation, Hunt’s hands are tied. He is aided by trusty accomplices Luther (Ving Rhames) and Benji (Simon Pegg, on goofy, enjoyable form), and, to his annoyance, CIA errand boy Agent Walker (Henry Cavill). CIA chief Erica Sloan (Angela Bassett) describes him as a “hammer” to Hunt’s “scalpel”, though an attractively carved block of wood would be more precise. More dynamic is coquettish criminal broker White Widow (The Crown’s Vanessa Kirby, who speaks with a fabulous, velvety purr).

Cleanly choreographed set pieces see the 56-year-old Cruise bungee-jumping into the eye of a lightning storm, swishing through a Parisian club, swinging through the bowels of London’s Tate Modern and rasping lines such as: “We’ll burn that bridge when we get to it” with a straight face. The charismatic Cruise commands motorcycles, helicopters, ropes and rubber masks, as well as the fluttering hearts of two women from his past (Michelle Monaghan’s Julia and Rebecca Ferguson’s former MI6 agent Ilsa Faust). Genre convention means it’s a foregone conclusion that this mission is not, in fact, “impossible”, but director Christopher McQuarrie cleverly controls the ticking clock quality that makes these films so much fun.

Read complete review at The Guardian

The plot may be as indecipherable as The Big Sleep, but the action is insane in this sixth installment of Mission: Impossible. Loaded with extended sequences that show Tom Cruise doing what look like real — and really dangerous — stunts all over central Paris and London, in addition to more far-flung destinations and on almost any means of transportation you care to name, writer-director Christopher McQuarrie's second outing on the series tops what he did with Cruise three years ago with Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation, which is saying something. That film pulled in $682 million worldwide (71 percent of that outside the U.S.), and there's little reason to believe that this new ultra-amped-up extravaganza shouldn't pull in that much or more.

You get the feeling that Cruise and his frequent partner in crime McQuarrie made a pact to go for broke here. Especially in light of his serious injury suffered in jumping a good distance from one London building to another (it does look awfully precarious when seen onscreen), it wouldn't be a total surprise if Cruise decided to make this outing as Ethan Hunt his last. If he does, he'd certainly be signing off on a very good note.

Unlike with other installments in the series, there is carry-through from the last one to this. In Rogue Nation, MI6 agent Solomon Lane (Sean Harris) went over to the dark side and joined the Syndicate, a terrorist organization bent on the idea that the status quo must be destroyed before a new world order can spring up. Lane's possession of three small plutonium bombs and his intention to use them springboard all the action.

McQuarrie, the first director ever asked to return for seconds behind the camera on this franchise, succeeds in establishing and more or less maintaining the ideal tone, one that fuses sufficient self-aware humor with the ever-more-outlandish set pieces so as to encourage the audience to enjoy them for what they are — some of the most extreme, sustained and dangerous-looking stunt-reliant action scenes ever assembled. Even at 56, Cruise is well-known to push these boundaries, and here he has two eager accomplices in McQuarrie and stunt coordinator/second unit director Wade Eastwood.

So even as the narrative becomes more perplexing — as before, realistic masks conceal true identities, characters' actual agendas remain hidden — the fast-moving spectacle unfolds in extraordinary fashion. Probably never has Paris been availed so extensively as the setting for such spectacular action, which encompasses not one but two breathless motorized chases, one involving cars and a second on motorcycle that has a helmet-free Cruise zooming through congested streets and, in the most amazing interlude, speeding against traffic in the busy circle around the Arc de Triomphe. In scenes like this, any sense of dramatic necessity or real purpose is obliterated by the sheer sensation of it, which is significantly enhanced in the Imax format. Lorne Balfe's sharp reorchestrations of Lalo Schifrin's original themes nicely further the cause throughout.

One way or another, McQuarrie spins just enough of a narrative line on which to hang the big set pieces. Having exhausted Paris, these characters who never sleep move on to London, where Rebecca Ferguson's former MI6 agent from Rogue Nation, Ilsa Faust, steps more to the fore, with intentions that muddy the waters even further. To figure out who's on what side and why and what they're all trying to pull off becomes an impossible mission of its own after a point. So the impulse is to just let this go and ride with it, a worthwhile decision because of the extraordinary level of visceral and realistic-looking action cinema the team here has achieved.

A chase that takes Ethan through a jammed church funeral service is pretty amusing, while the prolonged footrace atop some scenic London roofs (during which Cruise was badly injured) makes you catch your breath at times; as much as any other scene, this one provokes real wonderment about how it was pulled off.

Eventually, the journey's end brings everyone to Kashmir (doubled by Norway and New Zealand, it would seem), which the amazingly still-living Solomon Lane has determined will be the best place to launch the destruction to trigger the eradication of the known world and the birth of the new. Lo and behold, Ethan here runs into his ex-wife, Julia (a returning Michelle Monaghan), who was thought to have died after M:I 3. The fact that Julia and Ilsa bear more than a passing resemblance to one another is subtly acknowledged by the looks the two actresses give each other and adds to the resonance of these late scenes, which pivot on the Goldfinger-like countdown to a doomsday explosion Ethan's partner Luther (Rhames plays a bigger role in the proceedings this time) desperately tries to help prevent.

But even here, McQuarrie, Cruise and Eastwood (no relation to Clint) find a way to vastly up the ante, sending Ethan out on a desperate helicopter pursuit of August through the mountains. As has been the agenda throughout the film, this episode needs to top the one that has come just before and, to everyone's credit, it does just that. The action here represents the mainstream cinema's version of extreme sports, and these guys have staked their claim at the summit. Now someone will have to try to top this; either someone else will take on the mission, or these guys will again, if they choose to accept it.

 Read complete review at The Hollywood Reporter

Mission successful

Deborah Cornelious

Since 1996 and over six installments, special IMF (The Impossible Missions Force) agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) has been spectacularly ‘figuring things right in the face of danger, often without a plan. In Fallout, Hunt is older and wiser, but definitely not slower. He’s still as slick and smooth, but now he takes time once in a while to pant a little and catch his breath.

‘Same old Ethan’ is at it again and as the franchise is wont to do, there’s a larger-than-life plot where the world is at stake yet again and only one man can save the day. There’s a thrilling plot, with plenty of delicious subterfuge, one-upmanship and double crossing. But that’s not the lure of a Mission: Impossible film. Cruise’s highest grossing film series lassos in its fans with a different charm; it’s the death-defying stunts, the pleasurably perfect fitting of implausible puzzle pieces and of course, the actor himself.

Fallout is possibly the best of the six Mission films, with director Christopher McQuarrie (also behind 2015’s Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation) upping the ante magnificently. The film’s plot is complicated enough to lull you into a sense of comfort with its slightly arduous first hour. But when things start unravelling, it does so by keeping you constantly at the edge of your seat. No one quite does a chase like Cruise and Fallout has them all, from an on-foot cat-and-mouse game to speed boats and even cars. Hunt on a motorcycle will give you all the necessary adrenaline to want to ride invincibly against the flow of traffic. And for the final knock-down punch, there’s a helicopter sequence above snow-clad mountains with gunfire thousands of feet in the air.

McQuarrie’s action is superb, at times involving hand-to-hand combat — often with the conspicuous absence of a background score — is intense and potent without the swiftness of an orchestrated and practised attack. Cavill especially shines during his fights, a break from his character’s composed demeanour. It’s easy enough lose yourself in the director’s sleight of hand, but Hunt’s crazy stunts will certainly yank you back to earth. McQuarrie who has also written Fallout, crafts a rewarding blockbuster, succeeding in pushing the envelope with the right dose of humour, an unprecedented amount of action and an explosive bang’s worth of entertainment for your buck.

Read complete review at The Hindu

 Movie Rating : ★★★★☆  

The best Mission Impossible movie yet

Shalini Langer  

There are few things in life more pleasurable than watching Tom Cruise do things. Even if he has been doing the same for 22 years. Really, it has been that long. When Ethan Hunt started out on the big screen (once there was a TV version), Bill Clinton occupied the White House and Boris Yeltsin the Kremlin. The latter two have been done and dusted, but Cruise is still saving the world clad in a leather jacket — without breaking a sweat, but often now showing a grey stubble. And this Mission: Impossible, his sixth, may be his best yet, offering not just action that sizzles but action we can largely follow, happening to people we grow to care about.

Leading that list of Fallout’s charismatic cast is, of course, Cruise himself, as the IMF’s (International Missions Force) Agent No. 1 who, as the film emphasises, puts “individuals” above “missions”. Or, as the film puts it, is the kind who “cares as much about saving one man as saving millions”. In a world of faceless targets and brute force, that makes him somewhat special, his boss Secretary Hunley (Alec Baldwin) tells him. It’s a smart move by writer-director McQuarrie, the first person to get to direct a second Mission: Impossible (there have been four other directors over the years), to underline this aspect of Hunt’s long career as an agent. At a time of discredited governments, unclear enemies and blurred loyalties, Hunt is a man who acts by his own principles.

Governments, in fact, are dragged through quite a lot of mud here. The villain, who goes by the name John Lark, believes these have to be brought down for a new world order to be rewritten. “There must be great suffering before great peace”, and so on and so forth.

In a summer season now full of a guaranteed superhero film, at the very least, getting that right is not a mean achievement. Hunt does everything here — shootouts in tunnels, car chases, bike runs, building jumps, helicopter parachuting, copter clashes, cliff climbs, the ever-present mask tricks, and even his famous, famous running streaks across landscapes. Nothing, nothing, seems stale. On the contrary, you may have to take care of your pounding heart a bit through a finale that McQuarrie ratchets up and up, and still concludes satisfyingly.

That finale has a surprise setting, Nubra Valley in Ladakh, where some good foreigner sorts are tinkering around in tents and white coats to save the populace, whom we never see, of smallpox, a disease India has eradicated, while the Indian Army sleeps, in one of the world’s most militarised regions. Well, you can’t have everything, can you?

Read complete review at Indian Express

MASTERFUL ACTION TAKES ETHAN HUNT TO MYTHOLOGICAL HEIGHTS

ANDREW WHALEN 

Mission: Impossible – Fallout opens grungy, with Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) sleeping rough in a safehouse, suffering apocalyptic dreams of his wedding, interrupted by a mushroom cloud. From the start, Fallout picks Hunt apart, trying to peer inside a character resistant to examination after five movies of mythic labors.

James Bond has gone through this introspective impulse before, most recently with Daniel Craig’s 007, who exposed the superspy’s tuxedoed sophistication as a thin veneer covering a wrecking ball. But where the Bond series has gotten down in the muck, exposing the brutality of its protagonist’s methods—MI6 not so much assigning him, as letting him off a leash—Mission: Impossible has taken the opposite approach, deifying Hunt as mankind’s unbreakable savior. At several points, Fallout presents dark possibilities, alternate scenarios for the consequences of failure. How (not if) Hunt defies fate and rewrites, with sheer will, the world’s future, becomes the primary narrative tension—the question not so much whether or not Hunt will triumph, but just how high a scenario can be stacked against him.

The plot is flimsy—we’re chasing nukes again—but writer-director Christopher McQuarrie, returned from Rogue Nation (PSA: unlike the rest of the series, Fallout is in close-continuity with the previous entry), is by now expert at knotting new complications into straightforward plot points. He stacks body doubles, mask twists, assassination attempts and goons, then resolves them all in the next spectacular action sequence.

Fallout has several signature action stunts, including a HALO jump over Paris and bone-breaking jumps, all helpfully included in the opening credits so you know what you’re getting. But it’s a fight in a well-lit bathroom that most had me clenching my hands like angry Arthur. Pitting Hunt and a partner against one man, the fight is body-slamming, tile-destroying carnage, with a choreographic intensity rarely seen outside of The Raid movies. The action throughout is of a similar caliber. Mission: Impossible – Fallout is an unrelentingly consistent action movie, with not a single sequence wasted before the next big stunt.

Fallout may not have a sequence to match Hunt’s Burj Khalifa climb in Ghost Protocol—Cruise kicking off the face of the world’s tallest skyscraper into an escape trajectory arc is the signature stunt of this decade at least—but it has substantial advantages over the fourth Mission: Impossible (often declared the series’ best), most notably its abundance of worthy opponents, including the return of Rogue Nation’s The Syndicate leader, Solomon Lane (Sean Harris), now sporting a frazzled detainee beard. But more than villains, Fallout throws up human obstacles, including kill-first-questions-later CIA chief Erica Sloan (Angela Bassett), MI6 agent Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson), still trying to work her way back into the good graces of MI6 after the events of Rogue Nation, and Sloan’s right-hand assassin August Walker (Henry Cavill).

Fallout is downright labyrinthine in its shifting loyalties, with only Benji (Simon Pegg) and Luther (Ving Rhames) providing an unswerving core. Even Hunt is called into question, though Fallout treats it more like a fun counterfactual than daring to try and trick us. In one satisfying aside, we get a glimpse of a Hunt who’s thrown away his moral code and rampages freely. Sometimes Fallout can get more confusing than it actually is, especially when it indulges in a taste of the Shakespearean dramas playing out within the household of White Widow (Vanessa Kirby), an enigmatic philanthropist at the center of every deal.

But more often, because Hunt is an unstoppable, smiling inevitability, human nuance is outsourced to secondary characters to excellent effect. For much of the movie, Faust exists to disrupt Hunt’s plans—even if they seem to share some of the same objectives—popping up at inopportune moments, perhaps with a submachine gun. New character Walker becomes a more immediate foil, his pretty-boy mustache barely covering a brutalizing efficiency. Cavill and Bassett combine to become the perfect embodiment of the CIA, portrayed in Fallout as an organization at-odds with IMF and a parody of realpolitik prone to moral compromise, if not outright subversion, in the name of a compromised pragmatism—spywork adrift of Hunt’s holy mission.

Mission: Impossible – Fallout can feel a little more complexity-flavored than nuanced, but there’s no questioning its effectiveness as an action movie. Unlike the characterful, family reunion feel of the Fast and Furious movies, with their shaggy dog adventures, Mission: Impossible is as laser focused as an action movie can get.

Hunt gives one possible answer early in the movie, when Benji, shaking with nervous energy before a clandestine meeting, asks Hunt if he gets scared. Hunt doesn’t answer, just smiles. His indifference would be sociopathic if we didn’t know better: Hunt is a human-scale cipher not because there are hidden depths, but because he is wholly defined by action, a figment of IMAX psychology.

 Read complete review at News week

 Movie Rating : ★★★★☆  

Big, convoluted and exhausting. It’s also good.

Ann Hornaday  

In “Mission: Impossible — Fallout,” the sixth installment of the espionage-action franchise, Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt receives his latest instructions by way of an old-fashioned tape recorder nestled inside an edition of Homer’s Odyssey. It’s a quaint nod to the 1960s TV show on which the Mission: Impossible movies are based — movies that have become so expansively scaled, preposterously plotted and implausibly choreographed that they merit renaming. Presumably, “Mission: Irrational,” “Mission: Did He Really Just Do That?” and “Mission: Okay Now You’re Just Messing With Us On Purpose” were taken.

Let it be stipulated that “Mission: Impossible — Fallout” is often ridiculous. It’s too long by at least 20 minutes. The plot is laughably convoluted; the action — propulsive, percussive, brutally pulverizing — is exhausting. These are mere cavils, which reminds me of another minus (see below). Still, even its most irritating parts don’t fatally damage a whole that works amazingly well, despite its own excesses. It’s an efficient, attractive delivery system for the kind of spectacle we’ve come to expect from midcareer Cruise, who famously insists on doing his own stunts and most likely has a motorcycle chase permanently written into every contract. The fact that the one in “Fallout” occurs on Paris streets that are suspiciously unclogged is characteristic of the world Ethan Hunt occupies: a superhero universe that isn’t exactly mythical, but can still only be described as reality-adjacent.

The stunts, staged with vigor and a sharp eye for spatial balance by writer-director Christopher McQuarrie, grow wilder as “Fallout” goes on. And, admittedly, they’re a hoot. But, as with all the M:I movies, the heart of the film lies with Cruise, who at 56 refuses to obey the laws of aging, logic or simple gravity. With just a bit of facial pouchiness suggesting he’s not hiding a portrait in an attic somewhere, he exhibits the same all-out commitment in “Fallout” that he does in every film he’s in, whether it’s a slick blockbuster or idiosyncratic semi-indie (check out “American Made” sometime). As a superspy with an irritating messiah complex, Cruise brings a work ethic as solid as the movie’s narrative ethic is hectic, generously and subtly conducting an outstanding supporting cast that includes M:I veterans Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson and Alec Baldwin. Some of “Fallout’s” most delicious scenes, though, feature Cruise and Vanessa Kirby, leaving behind her Princess Margaret persona from “The Crown” to play a fascinatingly saucy minx of indistinct motivation.

What makes “Mission: Impossible” beloved — and what has allowed it to supplant the James Bond brand as a destination for action-with-a-little-fun — is its playfulness; there are at least two amusing set pieces of misdirection that give “Fallout” extra fizz, even if they’re as clunkily obvious as who the real villain is. Set against some magnificent locales in Paris, London and Kashmir, this is a great-looking example of Hollywood cheese at its most voluptuous and toothsome. Yes, “Mission: Impossible — Fallout” is big, brash and completely nonsensical. But, as someone once sang, that’s entertainment.

Read  complete review at Washington post