Mission: Impossible – Fallout Review

Respect for What It Is

A Film Review of Mission: Impossible – Fallout

There’s something to be said of a film production that knows exactly what it is without trying to shoehorn half measures of nuanced complexity that only succeed in distracting from the good rather than building upon it.  The professional collaboration among Tom Cruise, J.J. Abrams and writer/director Christopher McQuarrie continues to yield exceptional cinematic fruit for maintaining Mission: Impossible as a franchise that is unashamed, unapologetic and completely focused on delivering the best pure action one can witness on the silver screen.  With Fallout being the sixth film in the series and Tom Cruise currently in his mid 50s, one could easily forecast a dip in production quality, performance and general interest because no IP is ageless without rebirth by the dreaded reboot.  This, however, is not the case for this film.

I continue to be amazed and impressed by the Cruise/Abrams/McQuarrie tribunal in not only delivering new death defying stunts, immense set pieces and in your face action authenticity, but in their genuine desire to keep pushing the envelope in terms of the creativity within the action.  Sure, you may have seen a car chase in a film before, but here’s something new that will grab you by the throat to deny any possibility of your eyes glazing over in disinterest.  The fact that the majority of the action/stunt work is done practically while putting Tom Cruise himself into the meat grinder as much as humanly possible is evidence of a dedication to the craft that hasn’t seemed to be the benchmark in Hollywood for decades with few exceptions.  The man broke his ankle jumping a building for crying out loud and still found a way to finish the scene which is a total aberration in the stereotypical conduct of stars traditionally known for absurd requests/codling while on set with historically short tempers, not to be trifled with by anyone.

Of course, having such laser focus on all things action leaves little time and energy for anything else in the way of character development and plot for this film.  Recycling several characters introduced in earlier films and presenting the adventures of Ethan Hunt as a serial of self contained, world-ending threat preventions allows these films to quickly establish the conflict and immediately launch into action.  This formula is a proven success for these films.  However, as the legend of Ethan Hunt as the infallible super agent conquering all challenges grows with every subsequent film, the mythology of the fiction he inhabits is exposed as feeble.  After six films of stopping annihilation single handedly audiences are sure to wonder what keeps this character going, what made this character this way and what could be done to “fix” this world so prone to apocalyptic conflicts?  A saga intent on addressing these questions would not require an isolated, momentum breaking timeout in the third act to throw the audience a bone.

In what I consider the lowest point to Fallout, the effort made to reconnect Ethan to his past so as to explain his present and future was jarring, ineffectual and patronizing.  For any other screenplay, working this type of subplot into the dialogue is something vital to a more traditional character development, but since this has never been a priority in any Mission: Impossible film, right off the bat, this works against its own formulaic success.  Making matters worse is this effort boiling down to 2 scenes commenting about Ethan by other characters without his participation that combine to about 5 minutes of screen time.  The final nail in the coffin is the conclusion derided from these scenes: shallow romanticism also known as #reasons.

“Moving” = 26/33