Mission: Impossible – Fallout
Year: 2018
Rating: PG-13
Length: 147 minutes / 2.45 hours
It’s a little weird to think that we’re already on the sixth Mission: Impossible movie, especially considering how far the franchise has come since (what I consider) its revival in Mission: Impossible III (2006). Since then, the action has been consistently impressive and the stunts mind-bogglingly intense. Fallout continues to provide on this franchise’s promise of high-octane action and neat spy tech, even if the latter doesn’t seem to be nearly as impressive as in its previous installments. Ironically enough, one of the problems I had with this movie was how it tried to interweave plot from previous films in the franchise.
I’ll be honest and say that I don’t watch these movies for the plot. Sure, I’ll follow along to see how the team has to accomplish the “impossible” in the form of setting up a ridiculous stunt. From scaling tall buildings in Dubai, accessing computer servers underwater, and hanging above the floor of a highly secure room, these set pieces were always what drew me to this series. The main characters were pretty memorable, but I honestly couldn’t tell you about any of the tangential characters, especially the previous villains or love interests. And that’s where Fallout lost me.
While this film was also jam-packed with action, I also felt there was probably one sequence too many, and each of the action scenes were probably 10% too long. It was a bit exhausting having to sit through almost 2.5 hours of bathroom fights, car chases, and helicopter acrobatics. The stunts do look quite impressive, and it is clear that Cruise does most (if not all) of the stunts here. Although, at this point, I’m wondering if Cruise has it in his contract for this series to have his “running” scenes in these movies, as it seems to be an additional trademark of the franchise.
A Mission: Impossible film that almost has too much action and too much plot, I give Mission: Impossible – Fallout 3.5 stars out of 5.
