Good News. The latest Mission Impossible is the best of the whole series, and it will have you on the edge of your seat right to the end. There are the usual impossible stunts, performed by Ethan Hunt/Tom Cruise (not without injury this time), the usual chase scenes (the one continuous take through Paris is impressive), but this movie has more complexity to it than most others in this series. In some ways this seems like some of the Bourne movies because Hunt is suspected by the U.S. authorities of having been turned by the bad guys by. Throw in both Hunt’s old wife who is in danger and his most recent girl Friday who is working for MI6 and there is actually some pathos in this film when they are both in peril from a rogue agent who has set up a network of terrorists (the so-called Apostles)…. with 3 nuclear bombs! Here’s the summary from Rotten Tomatoes….
“MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – FALLOUT finds Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his IMF team (Alec Baldwin, Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames) along with some familiar allies (Rebecca Ferguson, Michelle Monaghan) in a race against time after a mission gone wrong. Henry Cavill, Angela Bassett, and Vanessa Kirby also join the dynamic cast with filmmaker Christopher McQuarrie returning to the helm.”
The movie is long by thriller standard— 2 hours and 27 minutes, and yet it doesn’t really have any slow spots. The pace is quick from the start. And the scenery in Paris and London is always good…..throw in Kashmir to boot, and you have a winner.
There are no sex scenes in the movie, no bad language worth talking about, but lots of action, and violence of course. After all, we are talking terrorists here. They have to go. An interesting twist to this installment is that Henry Cavil (aka Superman) plays an agent controlled by the big boss (Angela Bassett) who is meant to keep his eye on Ethan Hunt, to make sure he doesn’t go off the reservation. But we all know…… that is a thankless task.
As summer entertainment goes, this movie is great. It won’t produce any Oscars, except maybe for the stunts or scene editing, but as a thrill ride, its good from start to finish. Should children see this film? I’d say no to young children but yes to older ones, from about 10 up due to the violence. And the good news is— the film punctuates the theme that there really is both good and evil, both good and evil persons in this world. No ethically ambiguous themes poke their heads up very much.
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