Mission: Impossible – Fallout
Dir: Christopher McQuarrie
2018
****

I didn’t love or hate the first Mission:Impossible film when it came out in 1996. It was one of many big screen reboots of a classic old television show that got some things wrong and got some thing right. Mission:Impossible II was dreadful and in some respects the franchise should have ended there but it made money, so they made more. To their credit, Mission:Impossible III was a step up and many problems from the first two films were corrected. It didn’t do as well as the first films but it was good, a nice place to leave it I thought, no real need to continue. However, in a brilliant act of redemption, they made Ghost Protocol and injected the series with new life. The brilliant Rogue Nation followed and suddenly a franchise that should really have died a quiet death is one of the most dependable and anticipated films of the decade. With 2018’s Mission: Impossible – Fallout they have done it again and have bettered the two previous films. Breaking with tradition, they have hired the same director and have continued the story from the previous film – something I wouldn’t have thought was a good idea but has turned out to be quite the opposite. Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt is far more mature then he was in the previous films, is has a sense of humour and isn’t completely bulletproof. He’s human. Killing off the team in the first film was always my biggest gripe about the series but now IMF has a new team with Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson and Alec Baldwin returning once more. Mission:Impossible was always meant as a team effort and it is finally as it should be. Michelle Monaghan also reprises her role after first appearing in Mission:Impossible III, then cameoing in Ghost Protocol but being absent in Rogue nation. Sadly Jeremy Renner is missing from Fallout, the film being the second blockbuster sequel of 2018 in which he is absent with little onscreen explanation as to why (the other being Avengers: Infinity War). Interestingly, Sean Harris is back as Solomon Lane – the villain with the annoying voice from the previous film. His story is developed further in Fallout to reveal a larger organisation at play, which I think is a great move. Henry Cavill and Angela Bassett join the story as CIA operatives – Cavill taking the role as apology for stealing Cruise’s part in 2015’s The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and Bassett redeeming herself after featuring in the god-awful Olympus/London Has Fallen films. Vanessa Kirby also joins the cast in an interesting role that looks like it could be reoccurring within the franchise. If you listen carefully to her speech when she first appears, she seems to thank the previous head of her organisation, her late mother ‘Max’. While never confirmed, I wonder whether she is referring to Max from the very first Mission: Impossible film, played by Vanessa Redgrave. Everyone is on good form but truth be told, Cavill somewhat steals the show. The scenes involving he and Cruise are brilliant, whether they are fighting together or one another. He makes me want to grow a moustache again. What makes Fallout so enjoyable – and what sets it apart and above the previous films, is just how clever and balanced it all is. The set up is once again deemed just as important as the execution, so it is just as much about the espionage than it is about the action sequences. The ‘This is your mission, should you chose to except it..’ message is delivered by hand disguised as a book and self destructs in a puff of smoke rather than in an elaborate explosion. The action is over the top at times but it’s never unbelievable and an action such as jumping out of a window is shown as the difficult feat that it is, rather than played down. Indeed, Cruise – who does all his own stunts – actually broke his ankle while jumping from one building to another, delaying the film by eight weeks. If anything, Mission: Impossible – Fallout once and for all confirms Cruise as the ultimate action hero as every stunt is performed by him, including the incredible helicopter chase towards the end of the film. Mission: Impossible – Fallout kind of shows just how outdated the Bond films are while knocking the Bourne films out of the water. Christopher McQuarrie is a fantastic writer and the three films he’s directed before Fallout are all brilliant. I think it helps loads that he’s worked with producer J.J.Abrams and Tom Cruise several times before, so now it seems they are all on the same page and in full agreement as to where the series is going. Cruise has been modest about the film so far, stating that if Fallout does well they’ll make another and see how it goes but I believe they’ve found a recipe for success and the series has nothing to worry about if they keep on doing what they’re doing. The score is also notably improved. The dreadful Limp Bizkit version of the Mission: Impossible theme is almost a distant memory thanks to Lorne Balfe’s sleek and moody soundtrack that builds on Joe Kraemer previous efforts. It’s everything you could want from an action/thriller, it’s full of espionage and mystery, has a great cast, plenty of twists and turns and some of the best action sequences I’ve seen for a long while, while remaining intelligent and sophisticated.