Mission: Impossible 6 -- Fallout

 

Synopsis in 3 sentences or less:

After Ethan and his team lose some plutonium in an exchange gone wrong, they attempt to recover it by offering to trade Solomon Lane, the imprisoned head of the Syndicate. They cross paths with "John Lark", the codename of the man who wants to use the plutonium to bring about apocalyptic change. They must stop Lark and Laine from detonating the nuclear bombs in Kashmir, where Ethan's former wife Julia is doing humanitarian relief.  

Memorable Quote:
Fate whispers to the warrior.  ~IMF Contact

The storm is coming.  ~Hunt

And the warrior whispers back?  ~IMF Contact

I am the storm.  ~Hunt

Highlight:

I haven't seen Vanessa Kirby before in anything else, but she's great as the White Widow, very charismatic and alluring. And I'm not sure if it's intentional, but her voice and intonation is reminiscent of Vanessa Redgrave in MI1, whose character of Max the arms dealer is supposed to be her mother. 

Lowlight:

Henry Cavill on the other hand is not great. He's not horrendous -- I've seen his screen test for Bond from 2005 which is quite horrendous -- but he's overly stiff and lacking in charisma. 

Most interesting piece of IMDB trivia:

While Tom Cruise (Ethan Hunt) is famously known for performing his own stunts throughout the films, he ups the ante in this installment by performing four elaborate set pieces (mostly without green screens or stunt doubles): a HALO jump, an unusually dangerous variety of High-Altitude Low Opening parachute jump; a helmet-free motorcycle chase through Paris, including a portion in which Hunt rides against traffic in the circle around the Arc de Triomphe; an extended foot chase across London rooftops, in which Cruise broke his ankle while jumping between two rooftops; and a helicopter chase in which Cruise does most of the piloting.

Other thoughts, observations, and questions I didn’t ask when I was in fourth grade:

• Whoa, it's a 2 hour 27 minute movie! 😮 A far cry from the glory days of MI1 which was 1 hour 50 minutes, and also MI8 which I haven't seen yet but is apparently 2 hours and 49 minutes. 😰
• The IMDB trivia said that the HALO jump over Paris took a year of planning and over 100 jumps. If I were directing, I could have saved everyone a lot of time and money by scrapping the scene, which is completely unnecessary to the plot. Why can't Hunt and Walker just enter Paris like normal people? Apparently the Widow has spies everywhere, but they are spies too so they should be able to inconspicuously enter a city without having to jump from 25,000 feet during a lightning storm.
• Also if the Widow has spies everywhere and is a competent underworld figure, you'd think she'd have some facial recognition capabilities and could identify Hunt as an IMF agent. 
• "Max was something of a paradox. She had a fascination for paradoxes." ~White Widow.  This quote calls back to MI1 when Max first meets Ethan and says "You are something of a paradox."
• 1:00:11 mark - cool scene where Ethan, Luther, Benji, and a knocked-out Lane are riding in a hoverboat on the Parisian sewers to the tune of the classic MI theme called "The Plot." I also like the following scene where the policewoman sees them with a hooded Lane and then Ethan saves her from the bad guys. 
• 1:34:35 - the rooftop jump where Cruise broke his ankle. In general, doing your own stunts is overrated. Like in this case, there's no reason that he would need to do this -- we only see him from the back as he jumps across the gap to the next building. But of course Cruise has to be Cruise and do all his stunts no matter how crazy. And in this case, it cost him 8 weeks of filming and almost caused the movie to miss its release date. 
• I did a long college paper on the Kashmir conflict. Interesting and underrated place.
• I was a bit harsh on Michelle Monaghan in my MI3 review, but I think she's fine here. 

Final Analysis:

This movie doesn't do much for me. It's not bad, but it's too long and there's not many higlights or scenes that I really enjoy watching. I am ranking it last on the list.