Written and Directed by Christopher McQuarrie

Starring Tom Cruise, Henry Cavill, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Sean Harris, Alec Baldwin, Michelle Monaghan

I’d have liked Mission Impossible: Fallout a lot more if there was less of it. Despite its entangling plot and spectacular set pieces, it drags on far longer than it should, and culminates with a silly countdown race against time sequence we’ve seen far too many times. It isn’t a bad movie though, I did enjoy it and think it’s good. But it ain’t great, and the critics are wrong to call this one of the best action movies ever made, or even that it’s the best in the franchise. The Mission Impossible films have always been goofy spectacles pushed by spy jargon secrecy, filled with backstabbings, betrayals, whodunits, cloaked reveals, and twists more than any of us can stomach to remember. To me, the series peaked with Ghost Protocol, the 5th movie that Brad Bird made. That’s the one where Tom Cruise incredibly scaled the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. And yes, that’s him up there, out of his mind and risking his life for that scene. I saw it in IMAX when it came out, and screamed all the way through those terrifying moments. Because Cruise was really up there, and the entire time I really thought he was going to fall. Fallout never had me even close to that level of investment. But let me get into some of the positives.

These films have always been mired in complicated storylines. To call them convoluted is an understatement. I’m not even sure if you laid out all the plots from the first one until this latest, the 6th installment, that they would even make sense. I freely admit that never during ANY of the Mission Impossibles have I ever NOT been confused. Even with Fallout, you’ve got to pay attention if you want to keep up. I kept up, and I was still lost. And it doesn’t help that Rebecca Ferguson and Michelle Monaghan look really similar. Onto the movie itself.

I’m not sure how much of this plot I can coherently repeat here, but I’ll try. I’m gonna need help with this okay? I can feel myself screwing this up already. Here we go.

Ethan Hunt gets briefed on his latest mission: to stop the sale of three plutonium cores to a terrorist group calling themselves The Apostles, run by Solomon Lane, who Hunt captured in the last movie Rogue Nation? Was that him? Oh my god I seriously don’t remember. Anyway! Hunt goes with Benji (Simon Pegg) and Luther (Ving Rhames) as fake buyers to get the plutonium. But it all goes wrong! And Hunt must make a choice to save Luther’s life or the plutonium. He chooses to save Luther, and in doing so allows the terrorists to steal the cores, which will allow them to build nukes in an extremely short amount of time. Although formerly run by Lane (who is imprisoned now remember), The Apostles are acting on behalf of their newest client, some guy named John Lark, who plans on buying the cores from them. Is it an alias? Is it even a real person? Who is he? No one knows. Okay, with me so far? This is the first 10 minutes of the movie.

Hunt’s fuckup is alright, because they’ve also captured Nils Debruuk, the nuclear weapons expert who was working with the terrorists to build those nukes. Hunt and Luther interrogate him, and the movie has some good fun with how it all plays out. It’s really cool how they extract the information out of this guy, and this scene I think is a big reason everyone treks out to these movies in the first place.

From him they learn that John Lark is set to meet up with the White Widow (keeping up with these names so far?) in Paris for a deal on the cores. She’s the broker between him and The Apostles. Alec Baldwin returns as Hunley, the former director of the CIA and now the secretary of the IMF. Am I right with this shit so far? Oh god someone help me please.

Hunley praises Hunt for his failure in stopping the sale at the beginning. He calls his ability to choose saving one life over thousands his greatest asset, and the reason he has kept him around. I think it’s neat that the movie avoids the obvious cliche here that would find Baldwin chewing out Cruise for saving his friend over the mission. At least that’s the approach the NEW CIA director Erica Sloane (Angela Basset) has. She believes Hunt and his team should have died for the mission, “that’s the job”, and will not allow him to go to Paris to get the plutonium, not without her man Walker (Henry Cavill, not Superman for once). The pairing of these two action stars is fascinating, and close to legendary. Since Cruise has been around forever, and at 56 years old is an aging veteran in his craft. While Cavill is up and coming, at 35 he is still in his prime, and were it not for his misfortune of being in Man of Steel, one of the very worst movies ever made, his career would be along much further than it is now. He is a far better actor than his role as Superman would have us believe. He may get to Cruise’s level one day I think.

Back to the impossible story. Cruise and Cavill perform a HALO jump to get to the rendezvous of Lark and the Widow. And as is in Cruise’s nature, the jump is real. That’s really him leaping out of a military plane at 25,000 feet. What the flying fuck. He performed the jump somewhere around 106 times to get the right take. And what a take. It’s one unbroken shot of Cruise leaping, and then falling through a lightening storm, and saving an unconscious Cavill in the process. The writer/director Christopher McQuarrie said they shot the scene at dusk each time, which gave them only 3 minutes of the right light each day. And the skydiving camera man had to be three feet from Cruise in order to keep the camera in focus, while performing all of his actions backwards so it could be filmed, with about a three inch margin of error. What fucking madmen. What’s also insane is that the crew had to make all new equipment for Cruise to wear during that sequence, in order to clearly film his face from a jump that high. “Everything you’re seeing Tom wearing in this sequence did not exist before filming.” McQuarrie says. The scene comes out great though, and is wonderful to see on an IMAX screen.

Oh right, there’s a story. Do I have to talk about this? Hunt and Walker make it to Paris. The fundraiser is at the Grand Palais, inside of which is a great rave like party. The lighting and music of this scene is on point, it feels and looks like a rave in a place like that would. Pretty cool how Cruise and Cavill can’t hear each other in their headpieces and lose track of one another real quick. Cooler still is them scouting the area and following who they think is Lark to the men’s bathroom. And it is here where the much promoted fight involving them takes place. The fight, between Cruise and Cavill and the guy they think is Lark, is one of the best scenes in the whole movie. And what a fucking fight, what an amazing idea that one guy could win a two vs one against Cavill and Cruise. And the scene is so well shot and choreographed that you can believe it. The whole audience loved this entire sequence from beginning to end.

I think at this point I will have to discontinue describing the movie as I have been to avoid spoilers. Because from here on out the twists keep coming, and they don’t stop. I’ll give a vague overview of some of what happens next.

Cruise’s subsequent meetup with the Widow is a bit of a bizarre encounter, considering it’s a slow series of people getting killed during a fundraiser. And man does it take a long while before the crowd starts screaming and gets the hint to run out. Although I do like how Mcquarrie blurs out the image when Cruise speaks to the Widow about her being in danger and pulls the focus on just one of them. I think he did something similar during a key encounter near the end of Rogue Nation. But I don’t remember most of that movie so maybe I’m wrong.

The Widow wants Soloman Lane. Otherwise Hunt isn’t getting that plutonium. Christ, there’s more to this isn’t there? Now Hunt has to break Lane out of an armored car to bring to the Widow to get those cores. Wtf is this plot? As their planning it, an imagined scenario plays out before us of their interception of the cops with Lane. The music here is great as well (composed by Lorne Balfe). But the actual events of their recapture of Lane play out quite differently. This all leads to an unnecessarily extended chase scene through Paris, and is one of the movie’s major shortcomings. Even though it is well shot and mostly well staged, it goes on for fucking ever. I almost checked out even before the halfway point. There are only so many ways a motorcycle can be stopped by traffic, and drive through speeding cars and side roads before it becomes a repetitive bore. Even if that’s Cruise really riding the bike, and at one point veering through cars as he drives into oncoming traffic, I just wasn’t all that riveted. Then Cavill is on a bike as well, and then Elsa shows up too and there’s more biking. And do you see how this can become so boring so fast?

Cruise ends up running on foot (he still dashes madly like Robert Patrick’s Terminator), and it’s wild to know he actually broke his ankle while performing that jump you see him make from one building to another. What’s more wild still is that his doctor told him to wait 9 months for it to heal, but Cruise refused to halt production for longer than 6 weeks, and filmed the entire foot chase with a broken ankle that hadn’t fully healed. McQuarrie remarks, “Every shot in the foot chase, except the scene where he breaks his ankle, was shot after he broke his foot. It’s his right ankle. Every time he puts weight on his right ankle I want you to subconsciously say, ‘Ow.'” Jesus fucking christ.

The recapture of Lane, and the brief interrogation Hunt and his team get with him is another great moment. Lane is played by Sean Harris, and his raspy unique voice and empty eyes work so well here. His conversation with Hunt is kinda great, ending with “the fallout of all your good intentions”. A striking performance from a guy who’s in a straight jacket for most of the runtime.

I’ll talk about one more scene. It’s the one shortly after that interrogation, with all the major players in the room. Baldwin, Cruise, Cavill, Pegg, Rhames, and Ferguson. Like the rest of the movie, there’s a whole lot of talking. And if you pay close enough attention this entire passage of time is amazing. It must be some 20 minutes of theories and conspiracies about the real identity of Lark and Hunt and Walker. The reveals here make for the best of the film. I was hooked. But it’s also because it was built to by some great dialogue between Cavill and Basset earlier on. And there’s just so much talking in this movie I panicked when I realized how lost I was. But this scene grounded the movie, well most of it anyway, and gave me a reason to stay invested.

And I think around there is where the movie should have neared its climax, or found another way to end. Because the damn thing goes on for what must have been another hour after that point. And I just can’t care about ridiculous bomb countdown scenes that I know the ending too anymore. Even the helicopter chase scene at the end, praised by all, is a little more than mildly entertaining. It’s shot beautifully, and looks epic on the big screen, but you can only make two guys chasing each other in a helicopter interesting for so long. Cruise trained in how to pilot one of those things for a year and a half to prepare for the scene. And while I praise him for his stuntwork and dedication like that, I just can’t pretend I felt much more than boredom during it all. The copter scene may drag on the longest of all, with Cavill missing all of his shots from a machine gun. It is only the conclusion of this sequence that truly made me jump out of my seat. But then it leads to a letdown of a fist fight. And we again see Cruise scaling a snowy mountain side, which is a callback to him climbing that cliff in the beginning of MI 2.

But I think all these stunts are more fun to read about than to see. Because I don’t think Fallout nails it like Ghost Protocol did, or how all the great action films do. I don’t really want to see this movie again, I just feel like reading about it. I dunno, is that wrong? At 2 hours and 27 minutes this movie was unbelievably stretched out. And it isn’t the high octane kind of action you’d expect from a runtime like that, but instead a much more slowed down, methodical series of calculated action. That can be great and all, but you’ve gotta know when to cut things short, and quit while you’re ahead. They shoulda shaved 30 minutes of this thing easy, and I’d have liked it far more.

Overall, sure, you can go see this movie. You don’t have to rush to it, and you won’t be missing the next biggest thing if you don’t get the chance. I wish the filmmakers had restrained the story in their storytelling, and ditched that final act, which, by the way, has an appearance by a certain character that I think does more harm than good. And that over the top maudlin conversation at the end made me cringe. What a wrong place to end this movie.

I will say I liked Mission Impossible: Fallout, but I didn’t love it. I think the critics are smoking magical rocks to call this one of the best anythings ever made. There are massive echos to Dark Knight, Heat, Collateral, and Skyfall in Fallout. And I really liked the touching recap from Luther that the movie finds time for. A lot of this is in tricking the audience, and in lesser hands would be pure manipulation. But we dig it cause we are down for the ride and we expect it from insane Spy thrillers. I also liked how the movie finally questions Hunt’s blind acceptance of “your mission, should you choose to accept it”, and finally gets him thinking why he always accepts. You see, there are great things in here. But I can’t pretend I wasn’t bored and confused for half the movie. I can’t pretend I wanted it to end much sooner than it did. I can’t pretend to love something that I didn’t. That is something only a critic can do.