"The End You've Always Feared Is Coming. It's Coming, And The Blood Will Be On Your Hands..."
With screenplays for the likes of The Usual Suspects and Edge of Tomorrow on Christopher McQuarrie's cinematic CV, it seemed only natural that McQuarrie would soon helm the US's most longstanding and successful contemporary action franchise, where the transition from sole screenwriter to director has formed a winning partnership with Tom Cruise since the release of Jack Reacher in 2012 and the critically acclaimed Rogue Nation three years later. Returning to the fold this week with Fallout, the sixth Mission: Impossible release, McQuarrie reunites with the majority of his cast from Rogue Nation including Rebecca Ferguson (Life), Simon Pegg (Star Trek) and Alec Baldwin (The Departed) as Cruise's Ethan Hunt is tasked with retrieving stolen plutonium cores before they fall into the hands of "The Apostles", a terrorist cell with connections to "The Syndicate", the primary antagonists from Rogue Nation which featured Sean Harris as their treacherous and anarchic leader. With spectacle in abundance, a barrage of breathless action sequences and an editing pace which holds your head in a storm of jaw-dropping disbelief, Fallout is the ultimate summertime blockbuster, an action movie which mixes style and substance as the best genre movies always do and a shining example of how a series can expand and improve when made with such precision and expertise.
With the franchise in general being more and more renowned for Cruise's lust for practicality when it comes to stunts and set pieces, Fallout features some of the series' best examples yet of Cruise at his most insane and death-defying. Whether it be a high-speed The Dark Knight inspired vehicle heist, a Casino Royale and Jason Bourne-esque rooftop chase, or a concluding aerial helicopter pursuit which channelled the opening act of Sam Mendes' Spectre, Fallout perfectly blends the lines between fiction and reality, offering high-octane action on a constant basis in front of beautiful cinematography by Rob Hardy (Ex Machina, Annihilation) which makes you question how exactly a film which sees Cruise being put through the absolute wringer can be made without an over-reliance on digital effects. With an opening thirty minutes which does strangely drag after being bulked down with a crescendo of generic spy-genre exposition, Fallout isn't perfect but is undoubtedly saved by the remaining two hours which provide a cracking amount of evidence for being the best example of the genre since Mad Max: Fury Road, and with Cruise and co. so obviously enjoying exploring the capacity for how far the action genre can be pushed to the limit before certain death, from an audience perspective, long may it continue.
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