Mission: Impossible Fallout - Review Thread

They only say he's the best villain because he's played by Hoffman.

Solomon Lane is your best villain.

Oh and I rank 'em:

Fallout
Rogue Nation
Ghost Protocol
1
2
3

Ghost Protocol had no villain. There was a guy doing some stuff but he wasn't a character.

He just kinda shows up.

The real villain of Ghost Protocol was whoever the fuck it was who decided Luthor should have been reduced to a cameo.

I liked Fallout quite a bit. The first half felt more like a Bond movie than M:I, but that second half was total hold onto your seat shit right there. The IMAX scene is worth the ticket too.

Rogue Nation is still my favorite, followed closely by the first. 2 is still the only bad one. I think Fallout is tied with Ghost Protocol for me, but I'd probably have to watch it again.

I think it’s also worth noting that Christopher McQuarrie is growing as a director. Jack Reacher was... forgettable? I remember enjoying the movie but I don’t remember anything about it except that Jai Courtney was actually good in it. Rogue Nation is good, but visually a bit boring. Now there’s Fallout, which is also good, but visually really well done. It’s a Nolan knockoff but very effectively done. There’s a lot of really well executed scenes in Fallout that can compete with the De Palma’s and the J.J.’s and the Dubai scene.

This was a great movie - fun, tense, non-stop action. I don't think it holds up in the entire series as the best of the series, mostly because you'll see the twists coming from a mile away, especially when a certain cell phone might as well have CHEKHOV'S GUN spray painted all over it. But if you can let the predictability fall to the wayside and just enjoy it, you won't be disappointed.

Side note:




8/10 - great movie.

At no point in M:I 3 does Tom Cruise climb on the outside of the Burj Khalifa tower...

And yet at no point does the plot of Ghost Protocol become nearly as personal for Ethan Hunt as the plot of M:I 3.

The Mission: Impossible franchise is one of the few in movie history to operate on a consistent basis of putting out solid entries aside from its lone blemish (Mission: Impossible II), something all the more impressive considering its star has evolved with the franchise to continually raise the stakes and push himself despite being in his 50s.  These films have always delivered a lot of fun without much of the grit that the latest James Bond films have embodied, and have thrived at being the polished blueprint for summer escapism done right.  I've never felt like the narrative or characters throughout these six films are ever as compelling as they could be, but the action sequences are nothing short of incredible and the reliance on practical stunt work over CGI when possible is something to wholly applaud when other blockbusters favor the easy route.  This time around, Fallout picks up almost directly where Rogue Nation left off and starts us with a very exposition heavy introduction to Ethan Hunt's (Tom Cruise) latest mission to keep three casings of plutonium from falling into the hands of Rogue Nation foe Solomon Lane's (Sean Harris) hands, or rather the hands of his followers.  In order to extract the plutonium from Black Market arms dealer the White Widow (Vanessa Kirby), Hunt must pose as terrorist John Lark and capture Solomon Lane as collateral.  From here the plot shakes out in pretty standard fashion with some clever twists and some pretty obvious ones while Hunt must contend with CIA agent August Walker (Henry Cavill) and the return of Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson), who is on a mission of her own.  At this point the franchise has firmly rooted itself in its successful formula, and as a result the shock factor of the various twists throughout is pretty mild, but everything moves at such an exhilarating pace that you really don't have much time to dwell on any of it anyways.  

Where the film does falter though are the expositional sequences and character asides that are relatively one note and glaringly dull in comparison to the spectacularly executed action sequences.  Sure, that shouldn't come as a surprise that these moments aren't nearly as compelling as Ethan evading police in Paris on a motorcycle or hijacking a helicopter, but it's a missed opportunity that would've given those action sequences more brevity.  Mostly the characters just talk about how wonderful of a guy Ethan is amongst one another, as if that ever needed emphasis.  We hear about how noble Ethan is for walking away from the woman he loves because it's his duty to protect people, and how his morals are always in the right place.  I would've gladly traded these Ethan Hunt gush moments for more insight into just about anything else.  Cruise is wonderful as Hunt, but I've never really felt like Ethan Hunt was all that compelling of a character.  I suppose James Bond might not be either, as neither of them really grapple with much in the way of morality or are harboring personal demons aside from their respective love interests.  Ethan Hunt is the embodiment of pure good making him the perfect action hero but a largely uninteresting dramatic character.  I've always viewed Ethan Hunt as essentially Tom Cruise playing himself, which he does wonderfully but fails to ignite the dramatic weight that these situations he finds himself in should.  The only thing that really seems to get much of a response out of him is his ex-wife (Michelle Monaghan), a trope that I'm pretty disinterested in the fourth time around.    The comedy this time around also felt off for me, and I wondered if maybe McQuarrie is getting too comfortable with his writing and is essentially rehashing the comedic timings and one-line quips from Benji (Simon Pegg) to the point where it just feels obligatory.  I wanted the plot to push itself more, take some risks, and have at least some of the characters change in some fashion, but I couldn't shake the feeling that McQuarrie took what's worked and just plugged it right back into this one.  Is that an issue?  Well not necessarily.  The franchise has been at its peak since Ghost Protocol, so why mess with a formula that's clearly working?  Very true, but again for a film that's supposedly as predicated on keeping the audience on their toes as it is with its incredible action sequences, the plot and character development doesn't bring much to the table and is a step back from Ghost Protocol and Rogue Nation.

Fortunately though the action sequences in the film certainly cannot be described as a disappointment in any way.  The bathroom fight scene is one of the best I've ever viewed, combining a perfect blend of gleefully brutal violence, comic timing, and absence of jarring cuts that remove the viewer from the action.  It's got to be the highlight of the film, its Dubai tower if you will, and should be used as a model when anyone begins to block out a hand-to-hand combat scene.  Other highlights include Hunt and Walker skydiving through a storm, a wild motorcycle chase through the streets of Paris, and Ethan in pursuit while piloting a helicopter.  All of this is extremely well crafted, and perhaps the most impressive element of it all is that while it's all teeming in scale, none of it feels absurd.  The franchise has exceedingly moved away from gadgets and being too spy-techy (aside from the hallmark face mapper for creating those masks we love so much) since the first two installments, and in addition to the emphasis on practical stunt work, this is a spy franchise that actually feels very grounded, plausible even.  I can pick on the film for not being as daring narratively as I would like it to be, but I don't feel that anything is out of place or flat out doesn't work either.  The movie wants to feed enough exposition to get the ball rolling, but McQuarrie knows these films are at their best when there's less pseudo-morality chatter going on and more of Tom Cruise doing some of the most incredible physical stunt work a star of his caliber has ever done.  I wish I had more to say about the film, but really it's all pretty simple in a "that's how you make a summer blockbuster" kind of way.  The action is sensationally strong, the plot is serviceable but never inspiring, Tom Cruise is a marvel at what he puts into the role, and McQuarrie knows how to make a two hour plus film whizz by.  In a summer that's easily been one of the weakest in recent memory, Mission: Impossible - Fallout is the good time at the movies we've been yearning for.

7/10

A more fair comparison is:

"That's like saying Tomorrow Never Dies is better than Skyfall."