Mission: Impossible - Fallout (2018)

Director: Christopher McQuarrie

Story: Christopher McQuarrie

Cast: Tom Cruise, Henry Cavill, Rebecca Ferguson, Sean Harris

Music: Lorne Balfe

Time: 147 minutes

Bottom-line: Blockbuster of the year!

The moment you see a franchise release any more than 3 movies, a voice in your head usually goes, “Oh, God! Is this not over yet?!” But with its sixth instalment, the Mission: Impossible franchise continues to remain the outlier, with each film better than the previous ones. Living up to that standard, Mission: Impossible – Fallout, is, hands down, the best of the series so far. Tom Cruise, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Alec Baldwin and Sean Harris reprise their roles from Rogue Nation, while Henry Cavill joins the cast.

Cruise as Hunt

"There cannot be peace without first, a great suffering. The greater the suffering, the greater the peace. The end you've always feared is coming, and the blood will be on your hands." 

Ethan Hunt (Cruise) receives details of a mission regarding three plutonium cores which have been stolen by a terrorist group called The Apostles, related to The Syndicate, led by an unknown man, John Lark. After obtaining the cores in Berlin with the help of Benji (Pegg) and Luther (Rhames), Ethan loses the cores when he makes a choice to save Luther’s life. Hunt decides to rendezvous an arms dealer in Paris to get the cores again, but the CIA also sends a man to accompany him: August Walker (Cavill). At Paris, Hunt encounters Ilsa Faust (Ferguson), who does not reveal her mission or who sent her. Hunt learns that in order to get the cores, he has to trade Solomon Lane (Harris), alive. Several chases and character transformations later, Hunt loses Lane, who, along with Lark, now has the cores. Two nuclear bombs are about to go off, and Ethan Hunt and the IMF face a race against time.

(From left) Pegg as Benji, Ferguson as Ilsa,
Cruise and Rhames as Luther

The number of plot twists in the film is just unbelievable. Just when you see another road chase repeated for the nth time, there’s a new surprise; just when you think you understand a character, a shock comes out of the blue. Tom Cruise risks his life and limbs again with a whole new array of stunts, from performing a High Altitude Low Opening (HALO) jump in a vertical wind-tunnel with Cavill, to taking flying lessons to fly a helicopter. Unlike other movies, however, he does not have a grand entry (although Ferguson does!). With fistfights, shootouts, car chases, and scenes involving climbing vertical cliffs and hanging off a chopper, the stunts continue to amaze and make one’s jaw drop. The cinematography is a major highlight of the film. every action sequence, every stunt is captured in a crystal clear way (especially the helicopter scenes against the backdrop of the picturesque scenery!).

Harris as Lane

This film brings together the entire lead cast of Rogue Nation but for Jeremy Renner (whom you will find in Infinity War), and a couple of actors form the past MI films as well. Cruise impresses us with his exploits and action, Simon Pegg continues to provide the dry humour in the tensest of situations, Ving Rhames gets unusually emotional in the film and Rebecca Ferguson’s performance is superb. The IMF secretary Hunley (Baldwin) mentions how Hunt values one life the same way he values millions, and that is the plot catalyst for the film, which packs in more emotional content than any of the five previous instalments.

Cavill as Walker

With some “stale” action sequences revamped with new twists, and with a repertoire of incredible new stunts, with exotic set pieces and insane live-action sequences, Mission: Impossible – Fallout makes the most of the extreme limits of technology, of physics, and of human strength, to give two-and-a-half hours of non-stop adrenaline rush. If you liked the other films but still think you are “bored” of the stuff you have seen, you would be stunned at what Cruise and McQuarrie have to offer.

My Rating: 4.5/5

Rotten Tomatoes rating: 98%