[yasr_overall_rating]
Ethan Hunt and his IMF team, along with some familiar allies, race against time after a mission gone wrong.
With most film franchises, if they’re lucky enough to reach part 6, the overall quality begins a steep spiral into mediocrity; “Friday the 13th,” “A Nightmare on Elm Street,” “Halloween,” and the list goes on. Personally, the “Fast & Furious” franchise found its footing with Part 5 and “Mission: Impossible” has pretty much been steady from the beginning, save for part 2, which had some moments but overall, was a huge disappointment. With “Mission: Impossible – Fallout,” the filmmakers have gone above and beyond what is commonly expected from a film series with this many entries and have elevated the franchise into the stratosphere. Literally and figuratively. Say what you want about Tom Cruise but the man always brings his “A” game when making his movies, especially the “Mission” ones, where he does all of his own stunts. “Fallout” is no different and while it is vastly superior to most of the previous entries, it still cannot surpass “Rogue Nation,” which for me, is the ultimate “Mission.”
At the end of “Rogue Nation,” Ethan Hunt (Cruise) and his IMF team captured and put away Solomon Lane (Sean Harris), the leader of The Syndicate, a terrorist organization. In the two years since, they have reformed and now call themselves The Apostles, and are causing more death, destruction, and mayhem than they did before Lane was captured. When three plutonium cores go on the black market, Ethan and his team try to ambush a deal between The Apostles and a prospective buyer but the deal goes awry and the bad guys escape with the plutonium. When a lead takes them to Berlin, Ethan is informed that the CIA are now involved and Erica Sloan (Angela Bassett), the Director of the CIA, puts her best man, August Walker (Henry Cavill), on the case along with Ethan. Together, they are to try and track down John Lark, a man who they believe will try to buy the plutonium from The Apostles through an arms dealer known as the White Widow (Vanessa Kirby). When Lark is accidentally killed in a fight between Ethan and Walker, Hunt assumes Lark’s identity in the hopes that he and the White Widow have never met and the meeting goes off without a hitch. That is until Ethan realizes that in order for him to take possession of the plutonium, he must first intercept Solomon Lane as he is being transferred by an armored convoy to a secret location in Paris, and help him escape. Against his better judgment, he agrees and successfully manages to break him out but Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson), the MI6 agent he helped in “Rogue Nation,” appears and tries to take them out but Ethan meets up with his IMF team and they escape.
Ethan later meets up with Ilsa in a secret rendezvous where she explains that in order for her to be taken back in by MI6, she must first kill Lane. Having worked deep undercover with Lane in the years previous, MI6 feels that she may possibly still be working for him so by eliminating him, she will prove where her loyalties lie. Ethan states that Lane cannot be killed as he needs him alive but she states that if she has to go through Ethan to get him, she will. While Ethan and his team prepare to take Lane in, they are betrayed by one of their own and both they and Lane cut and run. When Benji (Simon Pegg) informs Ethan and the team that he inserted a microchip into Lane during the transfer, they are able to track down his final destination in Kashmir and quickly discover that Lane plans on detonating two nuclear bombs and it is up to Ethan and his team to track them down and prevent World War III from happening.
“Mission: Impossible – Fallout” is full of some of the most spectacular action set-pieces you will likely see this year and Cruise is involved in the majority of them, proving that at a sprightly 56 years old, he still puts most of today’s so-called Hollywood action stars, to shame. Christopher McQuarrie, who helmed both “Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation” and “Jack Reacher,” demonstrates his dexterity at handling almost impossible action scenes, and does so with great aplomb. The cast is in top form and the movie injects a lot of much-needed humor into, at times, a very dark and somber chapter in the franchise. It carefully balances the film’s seriousness and solemnity with just the right amount of levity and lightheartedness. Cruise shows no signs of slowing down and I for one, hope he returns again because I foresee this series continuing as long as Mr. Cruise continues running, riding motorcycles, and either jumping out of airplanes, flying them, or hanging off the side of them. Terrific entertainment.
In theaters Friday, July 27th
