IMDB listing
CNS/USCCB (J. Mulderig) review
Los Angeles Times (K. Turan) review
RogerEbert.com (B. Tallerico) review
AVClub (A.A. Dowd) review
Mission Impossible: Fallout [2018] (written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie based on the Television Series [Wikip] [IMDB] by Bruce Geller) delivers, IN SPADES, what it promises -- a simultaneously likable / engaging "buddy movie" (about a team of super-super-deep-deep-cover spies ;-) yet also a thoroughly heart-pounding, _often_ literally _cliff hanging_, spectacularly convoluted thriller that keeps one guessing _on multiple levels_ until the very end.
Indeed, the combination of the "buddy movie" with a "conspiracy movie" -- a story about trust in the midst of so many reasons to mistrust -- is fascinating even on the conceptual level. Yet, these ideas are fleshed out in the characters and the plot of this story / film series.
Near the beginning of the story, super-secret spy Ethan Hunt (played by Tom Cruise) is given "the Mission should [he] choose to accept it" of recovering plutonium, enough for three nuclear bombs, that had gone missing (from some Russian base somewhere near Kamchatka), that, we're told, is being coveted by a Norwegian unibomber-like nuclear scientist named Nils Debruuk (played by Kristoffer Joner) who had just written a radically anti-religious manifesto and in league with jailed, anarcho-terrorist -- Solomon Lane (played by Sean Harris) the principle super-villain from a previous installment in the MI film series -- organized a shadowy group of "18 Apostles" dedicated to inflict massive, nuclear, harm on humanity "to bring about peace."
"Choose to accept this mission?" Of course Ethan's gonna accept this mission. This is _exactly_ why he and his super-secret agent unit (the IMF or Impossible Missions Force) exists. And it initially seemed easy. Ethan and his team -- Benji Dunn (played by Simon Pegg) and Luther Stickwell (played by Ving Rhames) -- set-up a "sting operation" in Berlin to _buy_ the plutonium. Well "the exchange" goes south and Ethan finds himself with the choice of EITHER sacrificing his team members OR recovering the three balls of plutonium in essentially a carry-on bag-sized suitcase. He _chooses_ to save the lives of his team members and the nuclear arms traders are able to flee with their plutonium to try to sell it to someone else -- perhaps Debruuk/Lane and their "Apostles.
Needless to say, CIA Chief Erica Sloan (played wonderfully with icy seriousness by Angela Bassett) -- the IMF is but one, if super-secret, group operating under the overall umbrella of the CIA -- is quite appalled at Ethan's somewhat surprising humanity. IMF head Alan Huntley (played by Alec Baldwin) tries to defend Hunt's actions to Sloan: "But Hunt's two other agents would have been lost." She replies: "But recovering the plutonium was the job. In saving his two friends he put millions at risk." But Alan Huntley is so impressed by Hunt's choice that he tells him, "Precisely because you weren't willing to sacrifice even one person to save those millions, you are the best possible person to send out to recover that plutonium."
The rest of the story -- which of course involves coming up with a new plan to recover that plutonium -- ensues... And it becomes, of course, ONE WILD RIDE, taking us to Paris, to London, and finally to the mountains of the Indian controlled part Kashmir.
The closing sequence which is 40 HEART-THUMPING MINUTES LONG is spectacularly complex and leaves the Viewer gasping: "Well they don't call these stories 'Mission Impossible' for nothing" ;-)
And yet we witness a super-secret agent who ... cares.
AWESOME FILM !
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