With the latest announcement about the future of the Mission Impossible franchise, I thought it’s about time I reviewed their latest entry, Mission Impossible: Fallout.
Fallout happens to be the only movie from 2018 that I bothered watching on the big screen twice. Tom Cruise and Christopher McQuarrie have managed to up their game and have delivered the best movie in the series so far. Ghost Protocol comes in at a close second with its brilliant sense of humour and well executed set pieces.
Film Reviewer Jeremy Jahns best summarized the movie by stating: “It’s like the movie goes enough for you to white-knuckle it, keeps you there for a second, and then goes one step further. Before you pass out, the movie is like ‘Don’t worry, we’re going to let you breathe… after this last thing.’ And you just have to hold your breath a little more, it’s like you’re trying to make audiences around the world just simultaneously pass out from tension.” Seriously though, go check out his reviews, they are awesome.
The franchise has managed to up its game by giving greater focus on the team, injecting a dose of humour into set pieces, and by complementing the action sequences with high-quality videography and audio (whatever technical terminology). Mission Impossible has always had amazing set pieces, and they have turned the dial up a notch after the nail-biting Burj Khalifa spectacle from Ghost Protocol. McQuarrie and Cruise have made sure that all of their action scenes are well shot and planned out. We are allowed to take in their glorious bike chases and hand-to-hand combat scenes without any shaky-cam or quick cuts. They had to step up their game after the release of John Wick, which emphasizes clean action. Whether it was a bike/car chase, fight sequences or people jumping off aeroplanes or rooftops, nothing is left to the imagination of the viewer and we are given a front row seat to this rollercoaster of a movie.
I want to give special credit to the “Nightmare sequence” that occurs nearly midway through the movie. (IDK what else to call it) 1) Instead of a crummy exposition scene where they blabber out the details of a plan to us, they chose to let it play out through Ethan’s head. This isn’t anything groundbreaking, but, 2) The manner in which the scene is shot, with overexposed lighting in the background, slightly blurred out extras in the frame and blaring music drowning out the background noise gave us hints that the scene was playing out in Ethan’s head. And just like a dream, Ethan snaps out of it with a sudden muting of the score. Again, this is nothing that hasn’t been done before in movies, but to pull it off successfully is no mean task and their execution was nothing short of perfect.
I have always felt that the plot in Mission Impossible films have always been secondary to the action. I imagine it going like this: Tom Cruise hands over a list of stunts to the writers, and they go- ‘Okay bike and car chases? Covered. A HALO jump? Umm, we could squeeze that in somewhere? A minute long take of me running? Pfft, been there done that. Me dangling off of a helicopter and then taking control of it? Wth Tom we said no more dangling!’ It’s a generic plot with terrorist organizations chasing after nukes blah blah… you know the shtick. But the writers manage to intricately plot various elements and add enough twists to keep the movie from feeling stale. I mean, it’s kind of impossible to do that with all the various stunts going on, but the movie still needs a solid plot. Oh, and it finds a way to give closure to a past character as well. Neat.
So, videography covered, sound work has been given due praise. The acting. We have seen most of the cast in the previous movies, and they continue to do a good job. New additions Henry Cavill and Angela Basset. Cavill plays a nice foil to Cruise and they play well off each other. The no-nonsense ideology of Cavill’s Walker and Hunt’s precision planning go against each other’s natural playstyle and neither actor outshines the other, which is a good thing. Both of them have a strong on-screen presence. DC missed the trick by not choosing Angela Basset for the role of Amanda Waller in the DC cinematic universe (she previously played the character in the Bruce Timm DC Animated Universe). She is overbearing and plays the role of FBI head with the right amount of charisma and power to leave an impact during the few minutes she had on screen. We should be seeing more of her in the future. Rebecca Ferguson’s Ilsa Faust gets left out from the spotlight, after her breakthrough performance in Rogue Nation. She stole every scene in that movie, so they must have decided to push her back a little to give Cavill room to shine this time around. Vanessa Kirby plays The White Widow, a broker between various parties. She eases herself into the spidery character seamlessly and is terrifyingly good in the role. More of her as well in the next one?
Which brings me to the fact that we are getting TWO more Mission Impossible movies, 2021 and 2022. Both movies are going to be shot back-to-back so we can expect some sort of overarching plot between them. And this will be the 3rd – 4th time that Chris McQuarrie will be taking the helm at the director’s seat. His vision combined with his good working relationship with Cruise has translated to 2 consecutive hits on screen, and we should be expecting even greater things from the duo. Both of them are never short of ideas and it will be interesting to see where they take the franchise next.
10/10
Yep, go watch it right now.
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