An avid "Mission Impossible" fan, I rushed to the nearest movie theater with my family as soon as MI6 announced its release. I sat down in my seat excited for action-packed scenes and mystery (in the hopes that this is as good as the last five movies in the series).
The movie opens with Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) getting ready to be married when the pastor asks if Ethan promises to, "not live a double life....not keep her in hiding". Hunt panics to realize it was a dream and receives a package for his next mission, should he choose to accept it. In essence, the storyline is as follows: three plutonium cores are missing and fell into the wrong hands, code-named "The Apostles" headed by mystery man John Lark who believes that suffering will bring peace to the world. His ally is the villain from "Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation": Solomon Lane. If Hunt and the IMF don't find them, the world is gone as we know it (no surprise there). Meanwhile, the chief of the IMF (played by Alec Baldwin) and the chief of the CIA (played by Angela Bassett) are on a race to capture Lane. To Hunt, the only people that are trustworthy are his tech-whiz Benji (Simon Pegg) and bomb specialist Luther (Ving Rhames); in some of the beginning scenes of the movie, Hunt's decision to save Luther overtaking the plutonium cores drives the rest of the storyline. Hunt's decision in Berlin develops a theme: Is one life more important than millions of lives?
As usual, the storylines are choppy, complicated and filled with unnecessary twists. The movie is directed by Christopher McQuarrie, the only director of the M:I series to direct more than one of the six impossible missions. I clearly felt that the screenwriter need not have killed two and a half hours with redundant, unexplainable, ridiculed plots. Compared to the previous M:I movies, the fact that the film revolved around a bomb explosion felt old-fashioned and too expected for a Tom Cruise movie. On the contrary, the romance diminished quite a bit from the previous movies, which left room for the screenwriter to add more action to keep me on the edge of my seat. I also wished that when the plot twists were revealed that all of them didn't occur back-to-back in the same scene - the movie from that point forward was not as intense.
However, the set pieces are truly remarkable. The movie's best sets take place in Kashmir, a territory of India that is being fought for by India, Pakistan, and China. Kashmir is a hilly region filled with lush, green forests. I wish the action in Kashmir was eye-catching instead of a cliche, literal cliffhanger with an untouched Cruise is hanging after his helicopter and Walker's helicopters crash. Cruise spends the whole movie sprinting, flying, running for his life and rumors say that Cruise twisted his ankle in the cliffhanger scene. I personally think that no Mission Impossible cliffhanger can beat the Burj Khalifa fall from Ghost Protocol. In the end, the main cast survived and the bombs were diffused in the nick of time.
Before you accept your mission to watch Mission Impossible: Fallout, I would think about the level of action you are expecting. and be ready for anything from McQuarrie on the set. If Fallout is the last movie of the series, Cruise at least goes out on a high by continuing his death-defying stunts for 22 years.
