Mission: Impossible – Fallout (2018, Dir. Christopher McQuarrie):
The Mission: Impossible movie franchise has always been a star vehicle, but who is its star? On the face of it, it’s a bizarre question. Of course, Tom Cruise is the headliner as intrepid secret agent Ethan Hunt. But who is Tom Cruise in this role, exactly? Not even the series is sure. The first M:I movie presented him as an over-excitable, high-flying lunatic, which in retrospect probably hews closest to who the real Cruise is. In M:I-2 he took a stab at being a silky-smooth hybrid of James Bond and Cary Grant, to less than believable effect. In M:I-3 he became a devoted husband to Michelle Monaghan and an all-American guy who cares about his team, and none of it was convincing for a second — Cruise is only persuasive when he is focused on himself. Think of his maverick antics in Top Gun, and his look-at-me acting even in lauded performances such as Born on the 4th of July and Magnolia.
M:I – Ghost Protocol injected fresh life into the series by reformulating Cruise’s Hunt as a control-freak nice guy who also happens to be a reluctant adrenaline junkie. That flattering characterization has been carried through in subsequent M:I movies. But as the clock ticks on Cruise’s viability (not to mention his personal health) as a death-defying leading man, the M:I series has grown ever more elegiac. The latest entry, Mission: Impossible – Fallout, contains plenty of the patented Cruise risky business, as its star leaps across rooftops (even breaking his ankle in real life, a mishap included in the final cut), pilots an out-of-control helicopter, and pulls off a dicey skydive like, for reals. But Fallout is less of a romp and more of an endurance test. Cruise and his team are still saving the world, but instead of emphasizing superspy escapism, the movie is more preoccupied with how difficult it is for Tom Cruise, well-meaning good guy, to be a hero in this cockamamie world.
Those who see the M:I series as an integrated whole rather than what it really is—a collection of disconnected movies that makes half-hearted gestures towards continuity —will appreciate Fallout‘s attempts to tie up threads from previous M:I movies into a neat bow. Remember Vanessa Redgrave’s hot mama arms dealer from M:I? Meet her equally sultry and campy daughter, the White Widow (Vanessa Kirby). If you thrilled to Cruise’s mountain-climbing hijinks in M:I-2, you’ll be pleased to know that he’s back at it. As for the erstwhile Mrs. Hunt from M:I-3, Michelle Monaghan returns, only this time her primary function is to reassure her ex-husband that he was right to leave her and go back to his life of world-saving. If you recall the anarchist villains’ plot in Ghost Protocol to rain nuclear hellfire on the free world (and more power to you if you do), the nuclear terrorism game plan remains the same in Fallout. Most of all, Fallout is a direct carry-on from the previous M:I entry, Rogue Nation, featuring the same baddie (Sean Harris’s sneering Solomon Lane) and femme fatale (Rebecca Ferguson’s Ilsa Faust). Christopher McQuarrie, who also wrote and directed Rogue Nation, focuses on one overriding theme in Fallout: What if Ethan Hunt, a hero determined to play the spy game the right way (no innocent civilian casualties, always protecting his teammates), keeps finding himself in situations out of a John Le Carré novel, in which the only plausible option is to disregard morality and get one’s hands dirty?
Naturally, the ostensible thrill of Fallout is watching Cruise squirm his way out of these impossible no-win scenarios. Only things aren’t really so impossible this time. Whereas previous entries in the series depended on elaborate schemes, quick thinking, and crackerjack timing, the big set-pieces in Fallout depend mostly on simple application of brawn. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing; McQuarrie likes to pile on twist after twist as his heroes and villains try to outwit each other without outwitting themselves, but he’s more comfortable when folks stop talking, and start throwing punches or running. When it comes to vehicular mayhem, Fallout sports some lively bits, including a near-suicidal motorcycle run through Paris traffic (in a concession to Cruise’s advancing age, many portions of this sequence are noticeably sped up in post-production), and the action highlight turns out to nothing more complicated than a brawl in a men’s bathroom (think Casino Royale with even more wanton destruction of public property). McQuarrie tries to inject further subtext with the inclusion of Henry Cavill as CIA agent Walker, a mountain of a man who’s a younger, more arrogant, preening version of Cruise. “You use a scalpel,” CIA head honcho Erika Sloane (Angela Bassett, who seems to have been given two directions: “vamp” and “over-enunciate”) says to Hunt’s boss Hunley (Alec Baldwin). “I prefer a hammer.” Setting aside the ludicrous notion that anything Cruise does in these movies is scalpel-precise, it’s too bad that Cavill doesn’t really get to do much except smirk and diss Cruise’s Hunt every chance he gets. Elsewhere, McQuarrie shoots dramatic and expository scenes with the faceless professionalism of a mid-grade Bond movie, and only seems to rouse himself when Cruise and Ferguson stalk each other through the moody streets of Paris, both of them getting off on the fact that the other can’t be trusted.
Walker (skeptical of Hunt’s latest scheme):
Hope is not a strategy.
Faust: You must be new.
Although Fallout provides an adrenaline shot every so often—a nifty stunt, a chewy line reading by Baldwin, Ferguson’s über-assured performance as Cruise’s potential love interest (and sometimes foe)—the overall mood is doleful. (Even Lorne Balfe’s soundtrack goes light on the famous M:I theme in favor of ominous ostinatos and Hans Zimmer-inflected doom and gloom.) The attempts at camaraderie between Cruise and his usual buddies (Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg) are more forced than usual, and for most of the running time, the film’s lead seems strangely muted. We’ve grown accustomed to Tom Cruise as over-caffeinated superstar, risking life and limb to please an audience, so to see him with furrowed brow, blank uncertainty sketched across his face, is disconcerting. (He has a few opportunities to emote with Monaghan and Ferguson, and the best he can do is look chagrined.) Perhaps his uneasiness is due to the script, which expects him to be all things: a regretful ex-husband, a spook with romantic yearnings, a principled man with a vendetta against an old enemy. Give Cruise a full-tilt action scene or a hysterical outburst, and he’s your man; make things personal and ask him to go internal, and he’s suddenly far less interesting. Down the stretch, Fallout falls victim to the same fatal mistakes that plagued Cruise’s recent reboot of The Mummy, resorting to noisy CGI and an overblown climax involving crashing helicopters. Never mind Mission: Impossible—the finale of this film should be called Physics: Impossible, with Cruise surviving a few smash-ups that would kill a normal human ten times over.
And yet, despite its belated air, its recapitulation of virtually every plot pivot and action beat from previous entries, Fallout is still a passably decent time at the movies. The M:I franchise has been at it for two decades now, and much like the Bond series, its charm lies in its Noh-like reshufflings of star and plot. It’s odd to think that these movies can now be seen as something resembling old-fashioned moviemaking, but that is precisely what has transpired. Perhaps it all comes down to Cruise, as it always does. Why even pretend that we can track the character of Ethan Hunt? In a series where disguised faces and identities can be torn off at a moment’s notice, Cruise’s movie-star mug remains the irreplaceable main attraction, and Fallout doubles down on his importance, with nearly every character acknowledging that it’s all about him. Is the film a valentine or farewell present to Cruise? Time will tell. In any event, what this series will do after he retires from the action blockbuster business is a quandary that’s left to be answered another day. If Fallout is more hard-working than inspired, there’s still the comforting sight of Tom Cruise saving us all, making us believe in a never-land where action cinema is pared down to good guys outwitting bad guys without any troublesome incursions by the Real World. Enjoy these frivolous pleasures for what they are; both we and Fallout are aware that they won’t last forever. ■
