Review: "Mission: Impossible – Fallout" impossible to follow, but still fun

Our film critic David Edelstein reviews the latest novelties of the unstoppable spy franchise:

The sixth show "Mission: Impossible" with Tom Cruise receives rave reviews and I must ask the following question : Why this ridiculous series? ? Is this the principle? Or is it the annoying star but surprisingly capable of doing something?

There are some clues in the original incarnation of TV, which ran on CBS from 1966 to 1973 and was so dull that it had a strange kind of power. There were two big elements: the team of good poker-faced players working as high-tech crooks, donning realistic masks to mimic marks and coordinate bites accurately; and the theme of Lalo Schifrin, the musical equivalent of this wick under the credits, providing the illusion of momentum even when there is nothing, nada, continues:

When Tom Cruise took control of this title in 1996, he kept the Schifrin theme but rejected the concept of teamwork, so his character, Ethan Hunt, eventually became a lone wolf .

The director was the great Brian De Palma but Cruise was the muscle.

And for the second film, he hired John Woo, a hotshot from Hong Kong, to turn him into a super cool kung fu. He looked like a donkey, but the movie worked well.

For JJ "Mission: Impossible III" from Abrams, "Cruise has returned to the team's idea." Ving Rhames was on board from the beginning, but now there was Simon Pegg as a comic talker, which helped.

But that was number 4, "Ghost Protocol", which turned "Mission: Impossible" into an event.The director was host Brad Bird of "The Incredibles", a genius to show how the best plans could become worst-case scenarios.

Christopher McQuarrie's number 5, "Rogue Nation," was almost as good, with Swedish actress Rebecca Ferguson, who stole the film. But it was ok because the goal was different now. People had begun to dislike Cruise after his couch jump antics with Oprah and her public affiliation with the Church of Scientology. Suddenly, the goal of "Mission: Impossible" was to make him vulnerable .

This is also the theme of the most recent film, "Mission: Impossible – Fallout", again with McQuarrie. The script is "Mission: impossible to follow", but the film is very entertaining anyway, with a whiplash and a living set, including Ferguson (hurray!) And Henry Cavill as a competing agent who flaunts his beauty .

While Cruise fights an apocalyptic organization called the Apostles, we record again how it has suffered for us and will suffer more, feeling every punch, eventually climbing to the top of a cliff after a crash. Helicopter that killed a lesser paid actor.

I admit that I do not find Cruise particularly attractive, but I have no doubt why he is a star, and why this new movie is so incredibly well done: Nobody do not jostle harder, or signals in so many ways, that nothing is impossible.

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Story produced by Aria Shavelson.