Mission Impossible: Fallout Review

Mission Impossible: Fallout

Religion’s a funny thing, especially to someone like me.

You see, I’m one of those annoying types who thinks they have the answer to everything.

I know this because I’ve been told it often enough.

Which is why I find religion, and the implausible nonsense they peddle to get simple-minded folk to buy into their fantasies of eternal life, hilarious.

Simple-minded folk like Tom Cruise.

And in Mission Impossible: Fallout, everyone’s favourite scientologist combines his two favourite things on this earth: religion and, well, Tom Cruise.

Ethan Hunt is a secret agent man on a mission, and that mission is to save the world.

In a plot that certainly isn’t a reflection of what Tom actually believes is his reality these days, Hunt has to go rogue – yet again – to save the planet from nuclear armageddon engineered by a scientist with a grudge against religion.

Fake science no doubt, as opposed to those proper sciencey types you’ll find at a scientology centre near you.

Other cults are available.

Along for the ride is the moustache formerly known as Henry Cavill, reformed alkie Simon Pegg, one of the Baldwin brothers, that Scottish baddie from the last film and every woman Ethan Hunt has ever had feelings for in the last decade.

As you may have already picked up, my feelings towards Mission Impossible: Fallout are less than loving.

Maybe the problem is that I’m actually old enough to remember the original Mission Impossible, which was a highly entertaining Brian de Palma thriller with a clever plot and lots of good actors.

Which even includes Top Gun himself, Tom Cruise.

It’s easy to forget these days, but Cruise didn’t become the biggest movie star on the planet by accident – he used to be seriously good, especially in blockbuster films.

Alas, something changed about a decade ago and Cruise is no longer up for all this acting malarkey – it seems like he’d much rather play the hyper exaggerated version of himself that’s appeared in every film he’s made since Michael Mann’s excellent Collateral.

And nowhere is this more apparent than the Mission Impossible franchise, which is now just the ultimate vanity project for Hollywood’s Tom Cruise.

Plot and characterisation went AWOL in the second instalment and were replaced by Cruise’s gargantuan ego, as well as a bunch of yes man to indulge his every whim.

And nothing illustrates this better than the increasingly dangerous stunts Cruise performs.

Not that I have a problem with actors doing their own stunts, just as long as this actually adds something to the film.

But they really don’t, unless you count that extra zero in the production budget, and that’s the biggest problem with Mission Impossible: Fallout.

It’s less of a film and more of an exercise in keeping Mr Scientology entertained.

Hell, Cruise even broke his leg in one of these pointless action sequences, which you’d think he’d take as a sign that maybe – just maybe – stuntmen are better qualified to do this than some fading fifty-something movie star raging against the dying of the light.

I wouldn’t bet on it mind.

In spite of all this, I actually enjoyed parts of Mission Impossible: Fallout.

For starters, it’s hilarious – the funniest film I’ve seen since Mr Tom Cruise on Tom Cruise scientologist.

From the nuclear scientist falling for a painfully transparent ruse in the opening sequence, via some gendarme falling in love with Cruise about 3 seconds after trying to arrest him, to the literally insane monologue Ving Rhames delivers about how Tom feels guilty whenever something bad happens in the world because he hasn’t stopped this.

Like he’s fucking omnipotent… for a scientologist, Mr Cruise sure does have one hell of a messiah complex.

And I know I’ve ‘blurred’ the lines between Ethan Hunt and Tom Cruise here, but I promise you they’re one and the same in our hero’s mind.

Mission Impossible: Fallout

Then there’s the running – and no Mission Impossible film is complete without an utterly pointless 30 second clip of Tom running, which I believe started with that final scene in Days of Thunder as Cruise forces a 70 something Robert Duvall to sprint down Daytona.

Still, if you find the of middle aged men jumping off of rooftops and breaking their ankle hilarious, Mission Impossible: Fallout is the film for you.

It put a smile on my face.

Oh, and somebody – either Cruise or the director whose ridiculous name I refuse to type – is clearly a Dark Knight fanboy.

From the copycat prisoner-breaking-out-of-an-armoured-truck sequence, the stolen score from The Dark Knight Rises throughout this scene, to Harvey Dent homage in the final showdown between Tom Cruise and this year’s villain.

And after all that, I still can’t wait for the next one.

You see, Tom Cruise isn’t going to stop – he’s going to carry on making Mission Impossible films until he’s an old man, which is going to make those running shots hilarious.

If only I was a scientologist who’d been awarded a freedom medal of valor, because then I’d know with absolute certainty that I could do something to help Mr Cruise.

I guess being a heathen’s also a pretty funny thing.

Jonathan Campbell

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July 2018
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