MISSION IMPOSSIBLE

MISSION IMPOSSIBLE

·        Introduction

Mission Impossible Fallout review: Tom Cruise is willing to die for our diversion

Mission: Impossible - Fallout

Director - Christopher McQuarrie

Cast - Tom Cruise, Henry Cavil, Simon Peg, Vingo Rhimes, Rebecca Ferguson, Sean Harris, Michelle Monaghan

Rating - 4/5

Ethan, Benji, and Luther arrive at the meeting point - a dingy alleyway in the dead of night. This is how Mission: Impossible - Fallout begins. Benji can’t help but notice that there are no clean escape routes. He’s nervous. Beside him, Ethan is measuring the realm and their options. If they hit a roadblock, they’d be dead in minutes. If the enemy makes a move, they’d be dead in seconds. It’s a furry state of affairs, but they’ve been there before. They’ve survived worse before. Together - and Ethan is aware of this higher than anyone - they will do the not possible. So he looks Benji right in his worried eyes, puts on a brave face and says, as earnestly as he can, “I won’t let anything happen to you, Benji.”

And Benji believes him because he has no reason not to - even though he’s trapped in an alley with no way out, and even though the future of the world is at stake. Over the years, Ethan has always been there for him, and for his team. He has never let them down. His enemies call it the ‘fundamental flaw’ in his character - he values life, he values people, and he will risk everything to protect them.

It is this loyalty that plunges Ethan and also his crew into their next journey in Mission: not possible - Fallout, the sixth film in the increasingly exhilarating franchise.

To me, the series has always been defined by individual moments rather than larger arcs. For example - and you'll corroborate this - we have a tendency to all bear in mind highlights from the previous films - the Burj Khalifa sequence, Owen Davian’s threats, the ingenious Scobey Doo-sequel unmasking’s - however only a few of you'd bear in mind the finer details of the plots. They invariably involve international arms dealers and turncoat handlers, shady organizations and a complete and utter lack of faith in Ethan and his IMF crew.

In that regard, Fallout is the classic Mission Impossible. It is additionally maybe the primary film within the series that feels considerably sort of a direct sequel to its immediate precursor - 2015’s Mission: not possible - renegade state. The most obvious connective tissue, besides director Christopher McQuarrie of course, is the villain, Solomon Lane.

I was somewhat underwhelmed by Lane in Rogue Nation, mostly because casting Sean Harris had initially seemed like such a brilliant idea, until his character turned out to be a cousin to Javier Barden’s sylva from Skyfall, and ended up having way too little screen time to truly establish his presence.

Fallout doesn’t quite solve the Solomon Lane problem, despite taking the Dark Knight approach to his character, but it does make better use of his anarchist ideologies, and retroactively reconciles some of Rogue Nation’s issues. The stakes, as always, are global. But since Ethan and Lane have a history together, there’s a personal element to their relationship, which the series has been sorely missing since Mission: Impossible III - my personal favorite.

Mission: not possible - Fallout hits several of a similar beat because the previous films - there are a unit double crosses and triple crosses and there's the obligatory scene within which Ethan’s disregard for the rules prompts the chiefs to put him on a leash. So, they assign a chaperone for him, a disarmingly named beefcake called Walker, played by Henry Cavil - who receives second billing after Tom Cruise in the delightfully retro opening credits incidentally and positively oozes machismo. Walker’s allegiances, of course, are spotty - and Cavil plays him less like a lunkhead than he could have, which is always a good thing.

But he's important to the proceedings, especially towards the third act. At the chance of cutting to the chase - and handily ignoring the undercover work components of the story - let’s simply skip to the ending. You’ve seen bits of it within the trailers, and you’ve perhaps heard that it’s set in Kashmir - it’s true, although our esteemed censor board has ensured that the word ‘Kashmir’ is never spoken in the film - but you’re simply unprepared for the sheer intensity of the sequence.

For his latest magic trick, Tom Cruise learned to not only fly a helicopter but to also singlehandedly perform stunts in it. It’s a testament to his maniacal ambition that despite performing a pointless HALO jump in the film, by the time the incredible finale rolls around, the sight of Cruise jumping out of a plane is all but forgotten.

There is a rhythmic ecstasy to Mission: Impossible - Fallout’s action scenes, a melodic glory that is not only rare but almost unheard of on this scale. And it’s silent, all of it - which is unusual for McQuarrie, an Oscar winner known for his quick dialogue and a strong grasp of genre tropes. So once the action happens - Associate in Nursing heaps of this film’s plot is simply an excuse to make consequent crazy stunt sequence - it’s excitingly staged, with a sound style that rattles the chairs on that you sit, and buttery redaction that creates it all look like a dance.

On two occasions, the screen explodes into the IMAX ratio, which fans of Christopher Nolan’s films would know is one of the purest, most joyous moments one can experience inside a movie theatre.

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