Tom Cruise’s latest stunt spectacular doesn’t disappoint

Tom Cruise is 56.

It’s easy to forget that sometimes. The biggest leading man in movies has been in the game since the ’80s. He’s outlasted countless contemporaries, seen countless franchises rise, fall and be rebooted. The Mission Impossible series has lived nearly as long. It has seen the action genre achieve feats that would have never been attempted back in 1996. Yet six films deep, this series hasn’t just kept up with our golden age of big-budget action — it is leading the charge.

One of the secrets to Mission Impossible’s lasting appeal has been the relative independence of each film. While the whole series has an undeniable through line, it’s easy to pick up at any given entry. Fallout is, for the most part, no different. We see Ethan lying low, accepting a new mission with apocalyptic consequences and assembling his key crew to save the day. After a back alley deal for nuclear weapons goes sideways, Hunt’s team loses the trust of the CIA and is burdened with an inside man (Henry Cavill) who oversees their attempt at setting things right.

While Mission Impossible: Fallout is dense with espionage, the twists are as predictable as they come. Despite the first act pulling some genuinely clever punches it quickly settles into an established rhythm. It’s a paint-by-numbers spy story, which can get a bit grating over the film’s bloated 148-minute runtime. Complicating matters are several returning characters from the previous entry, Rogue Nation, who fail to meaningfully heighten the stakes. It’s a pencil-thin thriller, but it’s one that hosts a team of stunt craftsmen operating at an apex.

Past Mission Impossible entries have sold themselves on enormous practical set pieces, but Fallout truly raises the bar. A HALO jump over Paris plays out like a zero-G ballet in a single unbroken take. A chase across Paris seemingly lasts for the entire second act, bouncing from car, to bike, to parkour. Two helicopters engage in a dogfight across a mountain range, dipping across streams and grazing snowcaps. Director Christopher McQuarrie proved his action credentials on Rogue Nation — here he flexes them. In a box-office landscape of superheroes and space operas, he has made an espionage flick that manages to one-up the supernatural. All through the power of practical stunt work, enhanced through modern technology and style.

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The stunts offer such a heady adrenaline rush that the clichéd plot feels appropriate. This is a film where we want the villain to fall to their demise from an impossible height, and for the hero to save the world with fractions of a second left on the clock. With the believable punch of the amazing stunt work, the stakes of Fallout feel appropriately gigantic. It doesn’t matter if the audience knows how the story ends; the drama is in knowing the risks taken just to bring the story to the screen.

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Feature image courtesy of Paramount Pictures
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