Mission: Impossible – Fallout, written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie 6 out of 10

Mission: Impossible – Fallout, written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie

6 out of 10

Everything seems to be in favor of this new installment in the famous Mission Impossible franchise.

The public loved it, rating it at an astonishing 8.3, they also paid for admission in record numbers, making this another box office success, the critics have appreciated the effort, giving it an incredible 86 score – as revealed by the Metascore figure available on IMDB.

Therefore the under signed surely cannot see value and is surely biased by the knowledge that the super star of this vehicle is also the sacred monster of a ridiculous religious cult.

Having said that, it must be admitted that Tom Cruise aka Ethan Hunt has a better than expected performance, given the fact that he is now 56 years old, but apparently in excellent shape, probably still doing many, maybe most of his stunts without help.

One of the problems of the script for this cinephile is the need to offer ever more action, elements to thrill an audience and in that upset the balance between thrills and credibility.

On one side, an action, adventure, thriller must surpass what has been previously on offer, for we do not want to see the same old thing, a thrilling car chase that we admired in say Fast and Furious – although the under signed does not watch those- and therefore feels passé, déjà vu if repeated.

On the other hand, the film has to be credible, and this is becoming more and more problematic, when helicopters are shot upon, reversed, thrown on top of mountains, then ravines and yet the hero has to survive and conquer any villain that fate has thrown against him.

Indeed, the more, the merrier…

This new part has not just one or two women interested in, fascinated by the outstanding, dazzling, and daring, but aging, phenomenal Ethan Hunt.

There is a third.

Apparently, when Ethan Hunt will be seventy, there would be a harem that wants to be with the Man, given that he would probably retire, become a Mormon of the old style, or he would just be exposed by MeToo.

Admittedly, there is some effort – if not lip service – to make the Super Spy look less than a perfect fiction and more like a human, for instance when he makes a mistake early on, while dealing with material for a nuclear bomb…or two.

The script is clever, there are masks again, which make various characters believe that they addressing one man when they in fact talk to one of the Ethan Hunt team wearing such a disguise as to make the delusion work.

Wolf Blitzer –who has a role in this film – presents catastrophic news on CNN, about the result of a couple of terrorist attacks, making the monster that is held captive by Hunt and his colleagues slip, sure that they have succeeded, killing multitudes in Rome and elsewhere.

Benji Dunn aka Simon Pegg is actually wearing the Wolf Blitzer mask and trapping the terrorist…at least this once.

The chasing, fights, karate, combat scenes fought on the edge, in the air, with the prospect of Ultimate Doomsday Machine hanging over are obviously near perfectly made.

It is just that when helicopters, planes crash, they mostly kill occupants.

In addition, when a human being starts piloting a machine in the air for the first time, he would have a chance in a million – maybe this is an exaggeration, it could be one in a billion – to survive, never mind escaping under heavy fire from some of the most sophisticated weapons in the world.

Moreover, those machine guns, rockets, missiles are not released by some untrained rookies from the Eritrean (non) existent Air force.

At the controls are some of the best-trained killers hired by the CIA.

Of course, we should know by now the rules of the game.

Ethan Hunt is super qualified, one of the best, if not ahead of James Bond, Jason Bourne and all the rest of the pack.

Nevertheless, it still feels inconceivable that a human would keep doing all those stunts, fights, climbs and the whole paraphernalia, at the age of over fifty, and win against other equally qualified, trained opponents that are decades younger, but still have no chance.

Will Tom Cruise keep doing this when he is eighty-four?

Perhaps we should all enlist in Scientology, if this is the result.