As if more than two hours of nearly non-stop chases through the streets and on rooftops in Paris and London wasn’t enough, the latest “Mission: Impossible – Fallout” concludes with maybe the most spectacular helicopter dogfight ever produced that is made wildly more eye-popping in IMAX theaters. The already large-screen image suddenly-but-subconsciously expands by 26% and becomes much more visually vivid in the full giant IMAX screen size with the ultra high-definition IMAX cameras used for the scene.
It’s such a dramatic effect that even if most people won’t even know why, they will suddenly feel an adrenaline rush and may feel like yelling as if they are cresting the hill and heading down the tracks on a roller-coaster.
At multiple perfect key moments, strands of that familiar rousing Mission: Impossible theme song are integrated into the score, inducing an instant smile of pleasurable recognition.
And Alec Baldwin is back and even more enjoyable than his first outing in “M:I – Rogue Nation.”
Sure, it’s also become more over-the-top absurd in several parts, and extends good action scenes too long, just as most James Bond and superhero movies have done over the years.
And there are a couple set-ups for fake-outs that are stolen directly from other sources, including an episode of the 1966 season of original “Mission: Impossible” TV series called “Operation Rogosh,” which itself was borrowed from the 1964 movie “36 Hours,” in which a villain is tricked into believing a lot of time has passed since he was knocked out in an accident in order to feel comfortable revealing a secret about a plan he now believes has already happened. (CNN’s Wolf Blitzer gets in on the ruse.) A scene in which Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt plans an escape in which a police van is knocked into the water so an underwater escape can take place with the prisoner inside has been seen before in the James Bond movie “Licence to Kill,” among others.
Other cons can easily be predicted.
Sometimes the cons and players get confusing, which is not surprising given the writer is Christopher McQuarrie, who wrote the twist-fest “The Usual Suspects.”
McQuarrie is Cruise’s go-to writer of his films “The Mummy,” “The Edge of Tomorrow,” and the previous M:I installment, “Rogue Nation,” a rousing follow-up to the series’ finest episode “Ghost Protocol.”
In fact, McQuarrie is also the first M:I director to return for a second time, and he’s brought back many of the characters from “Rogue Nation,” and others from previous installments.
Two years after Hunt and the IMF team caught Solomon Lane (Sean Harris), his followers in The Syndicate have reformed into a terrorist group known as The Apostles and they are building three portable nuclear weapons to be sold to the highest bidder.
Returning IMF member actors include Ving Rhames (Luther) and Simon Pegg (Benji) but Jeremy Renner is missed. Rebecca Ferguson is also back as Ilsa, who is maybe helping the IMF boys or maybe not. Hunt’s former wife and love of his life Julia (Michelle Monaghan) returns as well.
Henry Cavill (Superman) is alternately sinister and engaging as a CIA-hired enforcer assigned to Hunt to make sure he doesn’t go rogue again.
Angela Bassett is a nice addition in a small-ish role as a no-nonsense CIA boss.
But of course this is all about Cruise and his many breathtaking stunts — fighting, running, driving, and flying — clearly performed himself in most cases.
And that lengthy helicopter scene flying through and around narrow mountain passes — not to be missed in IMAX.
— By Scott Hettrick