WOW. In an age of computer generated imagery, where technology makes anything possible on screen, it would seem truly Mission: Impossible to rouse such a reaction from a jaded reviewer.
Yet Tom Cruise does precisely that in Fallout via the simple means of hurling CGI off the nearest cliff and going back to action movie basics. If there is any dangling from helicopters to be done, tall buildings to leap between, or planes to jump from, the now 56-year-old does it himself. When it comes to movie bangs for your buck, Cruise, bless his crazy cotton socks, delivers an atom bomb’s worth of thrills.
This is the sixth Mission: Impossible with Cruise as special agent Ethan Hunt. The reboot of the Sixties television show leaves enough of a gap between pictures to make each instalment something of an event, a rare trick in this sequel-packed age. That is one reason for M:I’s success. Another, aside from the stunts, is that it keeps things simple. Hunt is given a mission, which he always accepts, to right a terrible wrong. Let the mayhem commence.
This time round, a band of terrorists are trying to get hold of nuclear weapons to start a global war. Hunt, with trusty sidekicks Luther and Benji (Ving Rhames and Simon Pegg) is on the case, but a rendezvous with an arms dealers goes awry.
CIA chief Erica Sloan (the ever wonderful Angela Bassett) accuses the Impossible Missions Force (IMF) of being a “Halloween” joke of an outfit, complete with masks. To make sure they do not mess up again, she sends her own agent, August Walker (Henry “Superman” Cavill), on the mission with Hunt. A star needs a pretty robust sense of his own worth to line up against an actor who is younger, and let’s face it taller, than he is, but Cruise seems to treat this as just another dare.
Their first daredevil act together is jumping out of a plane from a height so far above the clouds they need oxygen. Spectacular as this parachute drop into Paris is, the film is only just getting started. Among the sequences to follow is a fight between Hunt, Walker and an assailant in what has to be the world’s cleanest nightclub toilet. There are some things even Cruise will not put himself through for a film; being hurled around some lavvy with Trainspotting standards of hygiene is one of them.
Writer-director Christopher McQuarrie, helmer of the last M:I, handles the rest of the tale as if to the franchise born. There are lot of parts to slot into place, including the buddy stuff between Hunt and his crew, with Pegg happy to provide the comic relief once more as the team wimp (even if he now has a Hollywood-honed body of his own these days); some romantic interludes; and a spot of spy shenanigans. It is all present and correctly done, with some nice touches of sly humour. Everything, though, must take a back seat to the USP of M:I – the stunts. Any movie can be a secret service caper, but not many, with the exception of the later Bournes, throw themselves into the job with the kind of intensity on display here. From city to city, on motorbikes, in helicopters, up in the air, across the rooftops, Cruise keeps it as real as possible, to adrenaline-pumping effect.
Strange to say, but there is almost too much of this good thing. I would have been happy to say cheerio and thanks for all the thrills after the third or fourth stunt and the upteenth plot twist, but still they kept coming, right up until the end of the two and a half hour mark. Pack sandwiches and set bladders to brace.
Hamill acquits himself well as a counterbalance to Cruise, while Rebecca Ferguson, playing Ilsa Faust, makes a welcome return as an agent who can give as good as she gets. It is Cruise, though, old Top Gun himself, who is at the centre of the M:I world. On the strength of this blistering outing, it looks like he will be defying age, and the odds, for a while yet.
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