ACTION; 2hr 27min
STARRING: Tom Cruise, Henry Cavill, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Sean Harris, Rebecca Ferguson, Alec Baldwin
Fallout guy: Cruise
It’s on for the relatively young and old in the sixth M.I. go-round, with Cruise, Rhames, Pegg, Harris, Ferguson and Baldwin back on deck, Cavill joining the ranks as an agenda-heavy CIA agent and Christopher McQuarrie taking the reins once more after 2015’s Rogue Nation. Conspicuously MIA are three plutonium cores, stolen by terrorists for their usual nefarious reasons. Having bungled their retrieval, Impossible Missions Force agent Ethan Hunt (Cruise. Of course!) and his amiable IMF offsiders Benji and Luther (Pegg and Rhames) are now tasked with getting them back. Which brings us all to Paris and the bonkers, boundary-smashing stunt work that pretty much the entire world knows T.Cruise actually does in the exhausting—and yet so fun to watch!—service of saving mankind.
Because oh, what beauties those stunts are, with a smashing HALO (High Altitude Low Impact) plane jump into the City of Light to blast them off and the fanciest of motorcycle and auto footwork on the ground. Plus, the man runs. And runs. And then runs some more, despite an actual broken ankle. That alone is something to see, even before his spectacular, climactic chopper action in Kashmir.
When not tearing it up in Ninja Warrior mode, the mood of the lavish production is a nice balance of purposeful to sombre. Everyone involved takes the business of monkey very seriously indeed, not least a careworn Ethan, who while still fighting fit plainly carries the shadow of a life hard-lived. As well he should, for in essence the burden of duty is what the showboating is all about. The so-called impossible is always a trial by fire and no matter how fast you sprint, that heat has eventually got to hurt.
