Review – Mission: Impossible – Fallout – ” Non-stop eye-popping blockbuster”

The sixth entry in the Mission: Impossible franchise sees the return of director Christopher McQuarrie (The Way of the Gun) behind the camera, as well as Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt, and his team of Simon Pegg’s Benji and Ving Rhames’ Luther. Alec Baldwin also returns as the Impossible Mission Force’s handler, as well as Rebecca Ferguson’s antagonist slash love interest Ilsa.

When a group of villainous insurrectionists called The Apostles get hold of three balls of plutonium, Ethan Hunt’s IMF team is tasked with getting them back before they can turn them into nuclear weapons and blow up like everything.

After messing up their first attempt to get the plutonium back, the IMF are ordered by Angela Bassett’s CIA tough nut to take their best and literally biggest agent August (Henry Cavill) along with them to take control if anything else goes pear-shaped.

The team must trot the globe from Belfast to Paris to London to Kashmir, in a constantly-complicating ever-expanding labyrinthine Rube Goldberg machine plot that sees them trying to free an anarchist terrorist (Sean Harris) and exchange him for the plutonium. Obviously, they must jump through a million and one impossible hoops along the way, employing their trademark mind games, face-making machines and psych-outs.

This also requires an array of dazzling action set pieces, such as a literally dizzying HALO jump, a sprint across the top of the London skyline, an insane helicopter dogfight, a thrilling fistfight atop a glacier, and a bruising brutal bathroom-breaking beatdown.

The stunt work is absolutely incredible throughout and the very real breakneck speed and danger adds an exciting realism that other action spectacle franchises like the Fast and the Furious cannot compare to. Tom Cruise is actually insane for doing all this stuff, but very clever – seeing him put himself through the deadly wringer after perilous grinder is essential and heart-stopping viewing.

Cinematographer Rob Hardy’s (Ex Machina) photography is gorgeous, full of iconic compositions that capture the beautiful environs and epic action wonderfully. His Michael Mann-esque moments are unforgettable, especially when seen on an enormous and immersive IMAX screen. Our IMAX experience was enhanced further by crystal clear and all-encompassing sound – augmented by Lorne Balfe’s fantastic score – and 3D that has Cruise skydiving out of the screen and into your face; and also creates a depth that is always pulling you in.

Mission: Impossible – Fallout is a classy and charming non-stop eye-popping blockbuster full to the brim with slick and stunning spy spectacle shenanigans, that it is absolutely mandatory to see on the biggest and loudest way possible.

Mission: Impossible – Fallout is on general release in the UK now.