At nearly two-and-a-half hours of nail-biting suspense, Mission: Impossible — Fallout is a spectacular spy thriller, and a reminder of what the action genre had been missing in a world teeming with CGI heavy superhero films and Fast & Furious imitators.

Sure, Fallout can be over-the-top, and sure, some of the brilliant set-pieces require a certain suspension of disbelief. But when Vin Diesel continuously rolled down a hill in a vehicle in one of the Fast & Furious films I couldn’t give a flying you-know-what. Yet when Tom Cruise (Ethan Hunt) on a motorcycle leads assassins, European law enforcement and terrorists across an exhilarating chase through the crowded roads of Paris, I was on the edge of my seat. Likewise, when cities were leveled in many of the Marvel, DC or Transformers films, I could only stifle my yawn. Yet when terrorists come close to nuking Rome, Jerusalem and Makkah in Fallout, I felt the weight of their actions.

The difference, of course, is in the special effects. The fantastic set pieces in Fallout will often take your breath away because Director Christopher McQuarrie and the producer/leading man Tom Cruise skillfully employed old-school filmmaking techniques.

The fantastic set pieces in Fallout take one’s breath away as Director Christopher McQuarrie and Tom Cruise skillfully employ old-school filmmaking techniques

Take, for example, the jaw-dropping high-altitude military parachuting scene off a Boeing C-17 transport plane, where Hunt, the leader of the ultra-secret spy agency IMF and CIA assassin August Walker (Henry Cavill) make their way down to Paris to intercept a mysterious terrorist named John Lark. The filmmakers could have been lazy and shot this completely on a green screen but, instead, Cruise practiced on a vertical wind tunnel before making countless actual jumps until the director had three shots to use.

That’s not all; during the motorcycle stunts it’s often actually Cruise going at 100 miles an hour and, during the audacious helicopter chase sequence, it really is Cruise flying away in an actual chopper, sometimes getting too close to the elements for comfort. Similarly, many of the hand-to-hand action scenes have a certain rawness to them. This deliberate lack of finesse adds to the realism of the fight scenes and hence enhances our emotional investment in the outcomes.

This level of commitment isn’t new for Cruise or the last few MI films. But since 2015, when the last installment in the franchise was released, the genre has grown more and more digitised, which leaves Fallout feeling quite fresh.

Meanwhile, the storytelling is pretty good too, and surprisingly dark. Some of pacing and mood has similarities with Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises (2012), thanks to the production values and in terms of score and colour palette, as well as a torn-from-headlines plot about a group of homicidal terrorists called the Apostles who are hell-bent on resetting the world with far-reaching destructive events.

The characterisation and performances are also commendable. Cruise is as every bit as intense as the role requires, while Rebecca Ferguson is very good at playing an ex-British agent who is torn between her duties and her personal feelings. On the other hand, I wasn’t convinced by Cavill in his rather complex role and find him to be a wooden actor at times.

Fans of spy films will notice how Fallout can’t escape many of the genre’s clichés, including double agents, framed agents, as well as the blue wire/red wire bomb defusal trope; though these plot devices are fortunately used sparingly. There is one trope from the series that Fallout uses brilliantly, and that’s the Mission Impossible mask, in a scene that truly surprised me. It’s just another example of Fallout hitting the big note at the right time.

PG-13 for violence and intense sequences of action, and for brief strong language

Published in Dawn, ICON, August 5th, 2018