Mission Impossible Fallout review: Christopher McQuarrie is back for his second shot at directing an M:I movie, and the stakes have been raised even higher.
Mission Impossible Fallout review by Kat Hughes.
Mission Impossible Fallout review
Ethan Hunt returns for his sixth movie mission. This time he is once again face-to-face with Sean Harris’ Solomon Lane. He also has the added inconvenience of a CIA chaperone in the form of the moustache-endowed Henry Cavill’s Walker. The plot sees Hunt and his trusty team of sidekicks Benji (Simon Pegg) and Luther (Ving Rhames) trot around the globe in a bid to save the world. This time they have to try and take down Lane once and for all, and recapture the small matter of three plutonium weapons that have fallen into questionable hands.
Let’s face it though, by now, the sixth film in this franchise, you’re not watching the film for the compelling and intricate spy espionage story, you’re watching for the stunts. More specifically, the stunts so crazy and over-the-top insane that they make the Fast and the Furious franchise blush. And they’re all performed by the main man himself, Mr Tom Cruise. Each Mission Impossible film seems to up the action ante from its predecessor, and Mission Impossible: Fallout is no exception. This time around we witness him dangling in a lift shaft, HALO jumping, flying and then falling with style in a helicopter, and another spot of cliff-climbing. It’s mad then to think that the real-life injury he sustained was from jumping across buildings, which in the scale of this film, is a fairly tame manoeuvre.
Mission Impossible: Fallout Review
Much like the John Wick films, with Keanu Reeves doing his own stunt-work, seeing Tom Cruise endure all these feats adds a sparkle of movie magic. Suddenly the stakes of the film seem that much higher and somehow more real.
Related: Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation review
The stunt sequences are breath-taking and as impressive as we’ve come to expect from the series. The whole final third is just one big adrenaline charge to the end credits. Massive stunt set-pieces aside, the combat sequences seem more polished and visceral than we’ve seen previously. There’s an epic bathroom smack-down towards the start that is bloody, brutal and tightly choreographed.
Mission Impossible Fallout review
Action aside, writer / director Christopher McQuarrie has done a fantastic job of continuing the story from Rogue Nation. The two films working cohesively together; two halves to a colossal whole. Loose ends from Rogue Nation are neatly tied-up, and there’s a plethora of returning characters, including Michelle Monaghan’s Julia. The flaw in this method though is that, in its attempt to fit all the story in alongside the epic action, the run time is rather weighty. It doesn’t necessarily sag, but the film does feel its length in places.
A solid entry into the Mission Impossible franchise, with Cruise once again proving that he’s still as charismatic as ever in front of the camera. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to buckle in for one hell of an action-packed ride.
Mission Impossible Fallout review by Kat Hughes, July 2018.
Mission Impossible: Fallout arrives in cinemas in IMAX across the UK from 25th July 2018.
