The Rabbit's Foot

Mission:Impossible - Fallout

starring Rebecca Ferguson, Angela Bassett, Michelle Monaghan, Vanessa Kirby, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Tom Cruise, Alec Baldwin, Henry Cavill, Henry Cavill's Mustache and Sean Harris

directed by Christopher McQuarrie

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LOOK, I DON'T PLAN TO WRITE SPOILERS, BUT I'M NOT PLANNING ON BEING SUPER CAREFUL ABOUT NOT INCLUDING SPOILERS EITHER. YOU'RE AN ADULT. ASSESS YOUR COMFORT LEVEL AND MAKE A DECISION. JESUS.

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Normally franchise subtitles are separated from the franchise name proper using a colon, but see, this one has a colon built into the franchise title, so from a style point of view, I really had no idea how to approach Mission:Impossible:Fallout. It looks terrible that way, so I went with the dash. Is this an important discursive aside? No. But this is a movie about spies and nuclear bombs. At one point a dude downs a helicopter with another helicopter and everyone is fine (for a bit). The real stakes are pretty low. Right about colon level.

But I'm not trying to be condescending or dismissive. I like me an action flick as much as the next red-blooded, overcompensating, defensive, definitely heterosexual man. I'm not really one to dismiss a genre, unless of course that genre is the type of heartfelt movie about family that includes a scene where adult women (mother and daughters usually) end up singing and dancing to some popular song in a kitchen. But in the end of those, someone typically will die of cancer, so even they balance out somewhat.

Did this movie break any real ground? There were conversations on cell phones, conversations over invisible "comms" supposedly embedded in people's ears, there was surveillance from a van, there were tense meet-ups around major tourist landmarks in several European cities, there were car chases (Tom Cruise on a motorcycle? You bet your fucking ass Tom Cruise on a motorcycle) on narrow European streets, an attempted exchange that goes off the rails!, double-crosses, switcheroos and--because it's M:I--people getting their faces ripped off both as a plot reveal and as a means of dispatchment.

And also because it's M:I, it had the requisite disavowal forcing the core team to go rogue. Did Tom Cruise at any point say "Right now, the only people I trust are in this room"? YOU KNOW HE DID, STOP PLAYING.

So it's got core modern spy movie elements galore and franchise-specific tropes it retreads. Does that mean it wasn't an awesome way to spend $19 a head in the fancy Dolby cinema with the leather recliners on a Thursday night? It does not, reader. It does not.

The real problem with the advent of CGI is that we have lost the limits of what it is possible to show on a screen. Literally anything conceivable is show-able, in a photorealistic way that blends in (mostly) seamlessly with live action. But because there's no ceiling, the whole structure can wobble when filmmakers and studios confuse movement for kineticism. Because we have reached a point where we can animate (literally move in any direction under any imaginable force) every atom of every thing on any screen, the temptation is to go ahead and do it. But with no grounding, no planted human feet, no weight behind any of it, it's very possible to watch the most literally spectacular thing you've ever seen supposedly happening on a galactic scale and still be bored to fucking death.

These films are famous for their practical effects, with many stunts performed by professional masochist and injectable-face-filler life model Thomas Cruise Mapother IV. Yes, they work as a function of vanity and empty machismo. Stunt performers work hard and do great, unheralded (I mean, the entire point is we're not supposed to notice them) work. You're almost 60, dude. Let 'em. I'm sure whoever the lady is who matches your exact build would be happy to jump off a building for you. She could use the gig.

And yet, somehow, when the effort pays off... there's one fight scene in a bathroom in this film that is as exhilarating as any robot-planet-smashing punch-up 800 Korean, Australian, Dutch and Indonesian CG animators could cobble together in one movie for Michael fucking Bay. It's just some people throwing really interesting punches and breaking shit. It's choreographed, blocked, lit, performed, shot and edited with such thought and virtuosity, it weighs. You can feel it. The movement is palpable, the impacts are meaningful, it's kinetic without just being eye-noise. It's a genuine pleasure to take in. The best action sequences always leave me laughing. That one did.

There's another fight sequence in a club. Compare that to the casino fight in Black Panther, another movie I loved. The Black Panther fight was bigger, messier, splashier, as it should have been because the main character can jump over a house and wears a magic suit. It's played bigger, for comedy in some places as well and for pure spectacle. It's a great piece of work. But the M:I-F club fight scene is shorter, sharper, more menacing in the moment, a) because these are non-enhanced humans* and b) they've actually been earning the stakes for these characters over the course of... six movies now? Simon Pegg has earned his way out of plucky comic relief. Tom Cruise is himself, OK. And Rebecca Ferguson brings everything you'd think someone who should be headlining this franchise can bring. The setup works, the relationships work so, even though the Black Panther scene is a better fight, this one is more satisfying.

Other stuff happens with nuclear bombs. Do they defuse them just in time? Let's just say they don't put a giant fucking countdown timer on the side of these things for no reason. But in the end, you do what you do at the end of all these movies. You go: "ew, isn't Tom Cruise like twice that lady's age? Are they supposed to be in love now? I don't understand." And then you wait for the next one to come out where he hangs from a scaffolding by his actual scrotum or whatever and it will be awesome.

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*I have strong feelings about Henry Cavill, so that was a hard sentiment to commit to.