'Mission: Impossible - Fallout'

Starring – Tom Cruise, Henry Cavill, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Sean Harris, Angela Bassett, Alec Baldwin

Director – Christopher McQuarrie

Rating – 12A

Length – 2hr 27min

When Henry Cavill was cast in the sixth Mission Impossible, rumours started, could this be Ethan Hunt’s final mission? Well I’m not going to divulge details about that either way; it wouldn’t be spoiler free reviews then, would it?

Instead I will focus on the movie and what a movie it is; everything you would want, suspense, fate of the world, glamour, great action, comedy etc.

Ethan and the returning Benji Dunn (Pegg) and Luther Stickell (Rhames) are trying to stop three large amounts of Plutonium from being sold to a group called The Apostles (the remaining personnel from Solomon Lanes' (Harris) group The Syndicate, see Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation), in a sting operation gone wrong, they lose the plutonium. Ethan, the team along with C.I.A. operative August Walker (Cavill), go to arms dealer The White Widow (Kirby) to try and recover it. This makes Ethan deal with the fallout of his last mission and his dealings with Solomon Lane.

We are treated to one of the best fight scenes I have ever seen. It involved three actors, one of which has martial arts training and the others don’t, but you can’t tell. It’s so well choreographed and it’s a testament to how much of their own stunts Cruise and Cavill performed. In fact as far as I could tell, Cruise did all of his own and the only confirmed stunt Cavill didn’t do was the Halo (High Altitude Low Opening) Jump; that was because he didn’t have the experience.

The chemistry they have is a pleasure to watch. They clearly enjoyed working together and have talked about working together again (the fan boy in me, would love to see Cruise as Brainiac in Man of Steel 2). After watching the previous movies again, you can clearly see they get better with each new movie, so considering how good Fallout is, I am not sure how they can top this one, although I am sure Cruise is probably already working on that.

The movie is like a well oiled engine, moving at a great pace but not to fast, you don’t get the impact of what’s at stake and the emotional journey Ethan is on. There are so many homages to the previous movies and its those little moments that take a movie from being good to being memorable because in the end, we want to be able to talk with family and friends about them and say the old line, “remember when …”

Ilsa (Ferguson) is back as well (thank god). She is just as captivating as ever. I love watching her work, so understated, memorable, and beautiful. Ilsa’s involvement in the mission was definitely not part of the plan.

A big departure from previous movies is the progression in the action set pieces; the action builds steadily and as the situation gets more desperate, the action gets bigger and more death defying.

You can’t write a review on a Mission: Impossible movie without mentioning the man himself, Tom Cruise; I think this is his best performance since Edge of Tomorrow. Obviously I have to mention when he broke his ankle; the fact he carried on the shot and then asked to go to hospital, from what I have heard, is typical Cruise. Yet again Cruise goes for more death defying stunts, the motorbike scene, the jump, the scenes on the helicopter and on the mountain side are all performed by him. At aged 56, he can only do this for so long and while he is able, I applaud him for continuing to make movies the way he wants to.

A majority of the cast from Rogue Nation returns apart from Jeremy Renner who had contractual obligations with Marvel for Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers 4, but we have the walking mountain that is Henry Cavill and acting heavy weight Angela Bassett, both great in their roles for very different reasons

A brilliant movie, deserves its great box office return so far, well rounded story, great performances, amazing action, beautifully shot—while it’s still in cinemas, go see it, especially if it's on a big screen.