Mis­sion: Impos­si­ble – Fallout

“There can­not be peace with­out first a great suf­fer­ing.” Rogue MI6 agent and return­ing har­bin­ger of death Solomon Lane (Sean Har­ris) has a mes­sage for Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise), one that res­onates beyond its imme­di­ate nar­ra­tive con­text. It could be that this grandiose dooms­day prophe­cy is a sly allu­sion to the cur­rent state of West­ern pol­i­tics. But no. Far more per­ti­nent­ly, this line rings true in rela­tion to the recent for­tunes of the man who has been at the cen­tre of the Mis­sion: Impos­si­ble fran­chise since its incep­tion over 20 years ago.

That Tom Cruise – 56 at the time of writ­ing – is still able to open a $150m sum­mer block­buster is tes­ta­ment to his remark­able dura­bil­i­ty as a mod­ern Hol­ly­wood icon. Yet it’s fair to say that mid-career Cruise has so far been char­ac­terised more by miss­es than hits – while both Rogue Nation and Ghost Pro­to­col were con­sid­er­able box office suc­cess­es, attempts by stu­dios and film­mak­ers alike to repli­cate their win­ning for­mu­la (cf Jack Reach­er, The Mum­my) have blot­ted the actor’s copy­book to vary­ing degrees.

Cruise has always seemed unde­terred by this, reas­sur­ing­ly stead­fast in his will­ing­ness to push him­self to the lim­it again and again for the sake of his art (not to men­tion a hefty pay cheque). Increas­ing­ly, how­ev­er, his tire­less run­ning, run­ning, run­ning has start­ed to resem­ble some­thing oth­er than a means to an end, almost as though he’s caught in a hold­ing pat­tern of high-ener­gy sta­sis. This is the essen­tial fal­la­cy of Cruise­ness: that mov­ing very quick­ly, in all man­ner of ways and in every con­ceiv­able direc­tion, is a mark of progression.

All of which is a round­about way of explain­ing that Mis­sion: Impos­si­ble – Fall­out is an absolute­ly top-draw­er action flick – per­haps not quite on a par with Bri­an De Palma’s 1996 orig­i­nal, but com­fort­ably the best addi­tion to the fran­chise to date.

This is a rare bird in con­tem­po­rary block­buster cin­e­ma, a star vehi­cle that adds up to more than the sum of its high-gloss, pre­ci­sion-tooled parts. Where the fran­chise has tend­ed to lean too heav­i­ly on Cruise in the past, the sixth instal­ment feels like a gen­uine team effort. Once again the IMF’s top odds-thwart­ing field agent thrusts him­self into the heart of the action with trade­mark dev­il-may-care swag­ger, but his asso­ciates Luther Stick­ell (Ving Rhames), Ben­ji Dunn (Simon Pegg), Ilsa Faust (Rebec­ca Fer­gu­son) and Alan Hun­ley (Alec Bald­win) get stuck in too, using their var­i­ous spe­cial­ist skills to Hunt’s best advan­tage. Yes, the gang is well and tru­ly back togeth­er, and cru­cial­ly every­one makes a valu­able con­tri­bu­tion to the cause.

New to the series but no less impor­tant is Hen­ry Cavill’s covert CIA oper­a­tive August Walk­er, whose thick, immac­u­late­ly-groomed mous­tache adds a lay­er of ambi­gu­i­ty and mas­culin­i­ty that makes him the per­fect foil for Cruise/​Hunt. It’s a small but vital char­ac­ter detail, a cun­ning sub­ver­sion of the Super­man actor’s clean-cut image. You may recall that this seem­ing­ly innocu­ous piece of facial foliage was a point of fierce con­tention in movieland last year. Well, even Jus­tice League​’s belea­guered VFX team would be hard-pressed to deny that it was worth all the fuzz.

The mis­sion itself is rel­a­tive­ly straight­for­ward: inter­cept arms deal; recov­er stolen plu­to­ni­um; avert nuclear cri­sis. Lane’s shady inter­na­tion­al crime net­work, known as The Syn­di­cate, have oth­er plans though, and so Hunt and co soon find them­selves hot-foot­ing it around Paris and Lon­don, nim­bly dodg­ing bul­lets and red her­rings while leav­ing a trail of their own. A rooftop sprint between Black­fri­ars Sta­tion and Tate Mod­ern, which result­ed in film­ing being put on hold for eight weeks as Cruise recov­ered from a frac­tured ankle, is par­tic­u­lar­ly thrilling, as are a zig-zag­ging heli­copter chase and a sky­div­ing sequence for which Cruise per­formed a HALO (high alti­tude, low open­ing) jump at 25,000 feet.

The months of prepa­ra­tion and metic­u­lous stunt co-ordi­na­tion that go into pulling off a set-piece like this ulti­mate­ly don’t count for much (aside from the obvi­ous pub­lic­i­ty they gen­er­ate) if the end prod­uct as a whole is sub-awe­some. The Burj Khal­i­fa bit in 2011’s Ghost Pro­to­col, for instance, is arguably the sole stand­out moment in an oth­er­wise flat and large­ly for­get­table block­buster. Maybe not the only scene in the entire film to set your pulse rac­ing, but prob­a­bly the only one you actu­al­ly remem­ber. This is where Fall­out eclipses its pre­de­ces­sors. For the first time in a long time, we have a Mis­sion: Impos­si­ble film in which sto­ry and char­ac­ter are prized as high­ly as high-wire pyrotechnics.

McQuar­rie has now direct­ed three Cruise films (the first Jack Reach­er, Rogue Nation, Fall­out) and writ­ten a fur­ther three (Valkyrie, Edge of Tomor­row, The Mum­my). Objec­tive­ly speak­ing, that’s a pret­ty mixed bag, but the wider point is that some­times achiev­ing great­ness takes more than hard work, deter­mi­na­tion and a truck­load of cash. Clear­ly the pair have estab­lished a strong, most­ly fruit­ful work­ing rela­tion­ship. Long may it continue.

Though, if for what­ev­er rea­son the fran­chise does end here, with Cruise suck­ing in a lung­ful of crisp glac­i­er air after yet anoth­er last-gasp save, it will have been one heck of a send off. It’s tak­en two decades, five sequels and count­less void­ed insur­ance poli­cies, but Cruise’s unwa­ver­ing com­mit­ment has paid off in a big way. The suf­fer­ing is over now. Final­ly, he has found peace.