Mission Impossible: Fallout (2018), Directed by Christopher McQuarrie

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1 Perf-Action Mission Impossible: Fallout (2018), Directed by Christopher McQuarrie By Christina Harlin, your Fearless Young Orphan Got a confession to make. In the last six months my day-job has been unusually demanding. You all may have noticed my movie-essay production has decreased to a mere one movie per week (it used to be three). I m trying to rectify that by reprioritizing a few things, and I m growing more accustomed to the daily demands, but it s not easy and certainly not happening overnight. Currently, most weeknights I get home mentally fatigued and even watching a movie is kind of hard, much less writing about one. I ll find a way to make this work, because I always do. Not a whiner, here. I only mention it because I have become, in my mental fatiguery (that s a word I just made up), kind of a dopey movie viewer. We are in luck because Mission Impossible: Fallout works on so many levels that even when your brains aren t spry enough to follow the minefield of double-crosses and sleight-of-hand, it s still a great film. Fallout is rather a lovely combination of

2 film delivery there is a plot, and ethical questions, and character arcs, should one want to find them. On the other hand, on a day when I was having trouble deciding which shoes to wear because some are harder to put on than others, Fallout is a simply wonderful action film, that serves up one heart-pounding action event after another, filmed beautifully, coherently, breathlessly. Here is the end of the confession: I don t think I can tell you what this movie was actually about. I was seriously tired in the brains. There was some plutonium floating around, there were double agents, and double-crosses, there were terrorists, the threat of nukes, a countdown clock, and some kind of elusive code-named bad guy called John Lark. I can t recall how it all fit together. The great thing, though? I don t even need to. It matters not one bit what the danger is, so long as it threatens the world. Ethan Hunt and his team will put a stop to this nonsense in whatever dramatic fashion is the coolest. The most recent three Mission Impossible films (Ghost Protocol, Rogue Nation, and now Fallout) have set the bar for action espionage so high that Jason Bourne himself is probably trying to figure out how to join the team. They are some of the finest James Bond films ever made, lacking only, sadly, James Bond himself. There were moments in Fallout that had me awestruck. I think my favorite action sequence was a skydiving rescue. As I am extremely nervous about heights anyway (like, looking down from a secondfloor balcony makes me dizzy), to me this elegant, heart-stopping scene left me quite literally with a pounding heart. This is just the beginning. The movie never repeats itself. The action sequences, each one quite different from the others, come, thrill us, and then leave before they have overstayed their welcome. Have I used the phrase jaw-dropping yet? Because I always end up calling something jaw-dropping. In a huge, white-tiled bathroom, there is a fist-fight that is unexpectedly beautiful, while also being funny and humbling to Ethan Hunt. It is imagery I can t get out of my head. What else? One of the finest car chases I ve seen in years. A foot-chase (thank you, Tom Running Man Cruise) that somehow takes us straight through and up the rickety-rackety staircases of St. Paul s Cathedral in London. A helicopter duel oh yes, I said helicopter duel that boggles the mind when I think of the artistry and skill it required to put together. There s more. I d happily go watch it again right now.

3 I was recently in London myself, and followed a similar trek as Ethan Hunt s through St. Paul s Cathedral. When I finally reached the Whispering Gallery, I assure you I was no longer able to run. It s a good thing the world was not depending on me. But of course, there s more to it than that. All the beautifully executed action sequences in the world won t make me love a movie if I don t care about the characters performing them. Mission Impossible as a series has managed to give us some lovable friends, most notably Ving Rhames Luther and Simon Pegg s Benji, who function as on-the-spot sorcerers who can provide whatever Ethan Hunt needs to get the job done. Their resourcefulness is endless Luther always has a vehicle, a gun, a tool; Benji carries a Radio Shack store in his back pack. It doesn t matter how they can manage to hand off, pick up, or lend a dime to Ethan Hunt at any given moment in a city the size of Paris. The fact remains that they can. As usual, the standard Mission Impossible-styled trickery (the use of masks, their endless budget and creativity) has resulted in a couple of scenes where we, the audience, are also victims of the con, and it is so much fun to get tricked by the masters without feeling cheated. There are, as always, a bevy of strong supporting characters (Alec Baldwin and Henry Cavill have some fun here but where is Jeremy Renner? I liked Jeremy Renner. Oh, maybe he s been turned to ash for the summer). Invariably there is at

4 least one and possibly four gorgeous women kicking ass in their own element (Angela Bassett, Rebecca Ferguson, Michelle Monaghan, Vanessa Kirby...) Don t worry, ladies. There s enough Ethan for everyone. Oh, hey. Let s talk about Vanessa Kirby for a second here. She s a standout in her role as the White Widow, a shadow-broker for the kinds of deals that cause kingdoms to change hands. I thought her character was ridiculously sexy, possibly the hottest thing Ethan Hunt has bumped into since he met Vanessa Redgrave back in Movie No. 1. So what if she s a sociopath? That s what makes her interesting. I d watch an entire movie of Ethan Hunt trying to take her down, and she, in turn, trying to take him down, and then both of them just, you know, taking each other down, repeatedly, because there are other things in movies that are fun to watch besides non-stop action. Like non-stop action if you know what I mean heh heh heh. Ahem. Forgive me for waxing poetic now remember, my brains are suffering fatiguery but let s talk about Tom Cruise s uber-hero Ethan Hunt. Cruise does some surprisingly subtle work as this guy, for an actor I was always teasing for playing himself non-stop (I tease because you re my buddy, Tom). Ever since the series was revived by Brad Bird with Ghost Protocol, Hunt has become increasingly fascinating as a character. No, I know it sounds stupid, like fangirl talk. Let s be clear: I just don t love Tom Cruise in that way; it would be like dating my cousin.

5 Ethan Hunt s job is not to be an introspective character with doubts or fears; he is in fact meant to be utterly fearless and able, with nothing more than his own speedy legs, to whip out the solution to the apocalypse with only two seconds left on the countdown clock. But in the midst of all the action, Ethan Hunt has started to develop an interesting Ethan himself cannot believe this is working. character trait: wonder. Watch his face. He seems aware that the tasks before him are ridiculously hard (one might say impossible) and yet he considers, shrugs, and then dives in ego-first, single-mindedly pursues his goal and then, eventually, shakes his head in amazement that it worked. My theory is that he is an actual demigod and is just beginning to figure it out or, if you want to break the fourth wall he s discovered that he is a hero in action movies and cannot die, or even fail, unless that failure will be the catalyst for a greater victory down the road. Wouldn t it be crazy if he was actually just a patient in a mental hospital, suffering delusions of grandeur? Every day after breakfast, the nursing staff finds him racing up and down the halls, shouting about the plutonium he has to retrieve, bragging that the new sulky Superman is his bestie. Clearly I loved this movie; what s more, at the time, I needed it. It is smart, creative, beautifully executed entertainment. In the interest of fairness, my honeypunkin (who was not suffering from mental fatiguery) said that there were a few too many double-crosses for his taste, that he felt that got a little old. In defense of the series, seems to me that endless double-crossing is simply one of the tropes, sort of the way that James Bond can always seduce female agents away from their indoctrinations whenever it suits him. See this. Enjoy it. It s an action film of serious quality. I ll see it again soon, when my brains are rested, and we ll discover what a little coherence can add.