Cruisin’ for a bruisin’

Tom Cruise, king of the summer blockbuster, reclaims his crown in ‘Mission: Impossible – Fallout’

“Mission: Impossible – Fallout” ups the ante established by its high-energy predecessors with more death-defying stunts and mind-bending twists.

In the latest installment of the TV series turned cinematic franchise, Ethan Hunt’s mission, should he choose to accept it (spoiler alert: he does), is to retrieve three plutonium cores before they fall into the hands of a terrorist cell known as The Apostles who want to trigger a nuclear fallout as a way of global peacekeeping. Faced with a life or death decision, Hunt chooses to save his colleague, Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames), over the fate of the world. Is this decision Hunt’s greatest downfall or his greatest strength? 

It’s a decision that lands him in hot water with CIA Director Erica Sloane (Angela Basset). Sloane assigns August Walker, a thuggish pitbull of an operative played by Henry Cavill, to babysit Hunt’s recovery mission at all costs. What ensues is two hours and 27 minutes of globe-trotting, jaw-dropping, white-knuckled action that puts this year’s glut of summer blockbusters to shame.

Writer/director Christopher McQuarrie is at the helm—the only director to return to the “M.I.” franchise—and he’s in rare form here. McQuarrie is known for his labyrinthine plotting and laconic dialog, and this film is the perfect canvas for his talents. He weaves a plot of espionage and duplicity so intricate and knotted you’d think it was a pair of iPhone earbuds long lost at the bottom of your backpack.

It’s worth repeating that “Mission: Impossible – Fallout” is not messing around with the action. Gone is the heavy reliance on CGI and snap-zoom cheats designed to make the action feel more thrilling. Instead, McQuarrie and Cruise pack more real-life physical stunt work in this film. It’s no wonder Cruise broke his ankle performing one of the movie’s more routine stunts and still climbs to his feet sprinting off, visibly pained.

Cruise suffers for our entertainment here, making “Fallout” the most high-impact installment of the series. This film is a marvel of tactile, physical stunts and hand-to-hand action that doesn’t feel choppy or clipped. Aside from some careful reliance upon wire-rigging, there’s never a set-piece that feels compromised or rushed for the sake of “energy” or computer-generated cheating.

It’s a testament to Tom Cruise’s status as our greatest living action hero that, after 22 years and six films, the “Mission: Impossible” franchise hasn’t lost any steam. It continues to deliver some of the most awe-inspiring, in-camera stunt work to be captured on the big screen. The latest film is wildly entertaining and one of this year’s best to boot.