Impossibly, the missions continue
The sixth installment of the Mission: Impossible franchise finds Ethan Hunt and team missioning for our greater good all over the world. After six films, the franchise has worn some pretty deep grooves on the floor of the house of action adventure. To offer some new perspective, this reviewer decided to bring in a fresh voice, that of his wife.
Reviewer: So the film we saw was Mission: Impossible Six, or MI:6
Reviewer’s Wife:I think it was just Mission: Impossible—Fallout, because they didn’t want any confusion with (the British Secret Intelligence Agency) MI6.
R: Were you confused?
RW: I was confused the whole time. Or, more accurately, I was fearful of confusion. Reviewer laughs.
RW: I was ready to be tricked or fooled.
R: Is that part of the fun?
RW: Absolutely. That’s part of the fun of a Mission: Impossible film – to be tricked by all the twists.
R: How would you compare the twists in this Mission: Impossible with others?
RW: They were all right. I kinda knew the guy who was supposed to be good (August Walker, played by Henry Cavill), but then turns out bad, was bad from the start.
R: In general, what are your expectations of a Mission: Impossible film?
RW: That I’m going to be thrown around, and that I’ll have my heart rate elevated the whole time.
R: Did Mission: Impossible—Fallout meet those expectations?
RW: Absolutely! And seeing it in a state-of-the art theater was amazing.
R: So your message to our readers is to see it in a theater?
RW: See it in a theater. Don’t wait to see it on an iPad. Don’t watch it on your watch.
R: So we can’t talk about Mission: Impossible—Fallout, without talking about Tom Cruise.
RW: It’s what we talk about when we talk about Mission: Impossible.
R: When you hear those two words together: “Tom” and “Cruise”, what immediately comes to mind?
RW: Top Gun
R: Hmm, why Top Gun?
RW: That was the first time I understood that he had the potential to be a star. Also, there’s “Tah” in Top and “Tah” in Tom.
R: How about his other films?
RW: He’s been in all sorts of crazy films that I’ve forgotten about, like Magnolia. Then there’s the one where he’s the aging assassin, and he ends up dying at the end. (From our crack research staff: Collateral). He’s just been in so many films. Also that spoof film where he plays the really heavy producer. Ben Stiller movie. Jack Black. (Crack Staff: Tropic Thunder).
R: He’s been around since 1982, and here we are in 2018…
RW: oh, and Taps.
R: … So, if you had to explain Tom Cruise to somebody who’s never seen a Tom Cruise movie before, like someone from another country where they’ve never heard of Tom Cruise…
RW: … because not all Tom Cruise movies are Tom Cruise movies. In some he recedes more than in others, and I think that shows integrity, that he likes to do things that are off the beaten path. It’s hard to get past the Scientology thing, but he’s a hard-working actor. He really likes what he’s doing. He loves Hollywood and the movie business.
R: So where does Mission: Impossible—Fallout, fall in his body of work?
RW: He’s definitely getting older, but still doing all these crazy helicopter stunts and whatnot. I feel like they’re just going to keep going with the franchise, and he’s going to get older and older, and it’s going to turn into a Sean Connery James Bond situation.
R: Does the film acknowledge the aging issue at all?
RW: Not at all.
R: So they’d like us to believe that he’s still twenty-five?
RW: Well, no, because they would have done more things to his face. They’re definitely letting him look older.
R: So the film begins in Venice, with Ethan Hunt and his team including Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg) and Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames). We’re not sure what happened to Jeremy Renner …
RW: … totally forgot about him …
R: .. and a botched attempt to buy plutonium, which kicks off the rest of the film, consisting mostly of an overly complex plot, and a number of set piece chases and fights. When all this action is happening, are you still involved with the characters?
RW: It’s obvious that Ethan always figures it out.
R: Then what’s the point of watching the film?
RW: Because it’s creative in the way in which he solves the problems he confronts. There’s a cleverness in the way he solves problems.
R: Let’s talk about the helicopter chase scene, in which the bad guys are trying to escape in the lead of a two helicopter flight to get to a minimum safe distance before detonating two nuclear bombs. Hunt manages to get control of the trailing ‘copter, and a chase ensues. In most scenes like this, good guy and bad guy fight it out in one helicopter, but here they’re separated. We know at some point that they’ll have to come together, but they’re in two separate machines high up in the air, so how will that happen?
RW: That’s the creative problem solving I’m talking about. It reminded me of MI:2, and the motorcycle jousting scene at the end. But here, they’re jousting with helicopters. Or like a very updated version of a stagecoach chase. Oh, and I guess he doesn’t even know how to fly a helicopter, so he has to do that. RW laughs.
R: The film does take some pains to sell us on the fact that Hunt can learn to fly “on the fly.”
RW: Yeah, and that’s where the film laughs at itself a bit, and also that’s the old Tom Cruise, the Tom Cruise who can laugh at himself a bit, like Risky Business Tom Cruise. Like when he’s on the phone with the killer pimp. There’s bit of that Tom Cruise in the Tom Cruise learning how to fly the helicopter.
R: Lastly, let’s talk a bit about the female characters.
RW: There were three characters Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson), White Widow (Vanessa Kirby), and Julia Meade-Hunt (Michelle Monaghan). Definitely White Widow is a Bond Girl. She’s mysterious, and there’s a mystique about her, and there’s this odd sort of reverence for her, and those clothes… RW trails off a bit. It’s then revealed that she’s an arms trader, and though she is a stock character, Vanessa Kirby seemed to be having a lot of fun with it.
R: Did you think she’d turn out to be bad?
RW: Definitely. I thought that somehow she was going to be bad, and then get killed. A lot of those girls tend to get, you know, wiped out.
R: That is what tends to happen to Bond Girls.
RW: So how would you sum up Mission: Impossible – Fallout, for our readers?
R: You should see this film, because you never know how many missions Tom Cruise has left in him.
Mission: Impossible – Fallout opens today in most Bay Area theaters.
