My 'Mission Impossible: Fallout' review
Jul 27, 2018 19:28:16 GMT
theravenking, Nalkarj, and 3 more like this
Post by Deleted on Jul 27, 2018 19:28:16 GMT
Yes it's long, but this movie really fucking deserved it.
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It was fifteen minutes into ‘Mission Impossible: Fallout’ that I realized this long running franchise wasn’t just back for another fun adventure, but that Christopher McQuarrie had reprised his role as director with intent to leave an indelible mark on the genre, consequently delivering a cinematic cocktail— a cocktail composed of wide arrangement, making for a weaving mosaic of plotting, unpredictability, and exhilarating set pieces— that I don’t think will be topped anytime soon. It’s a cinematic high unlike anything I’ve seen before.
In a long running franchise of twenty two years, I would never have expected the sixth entry, in what seems would be a long expired and stale franchise by now, to be the best work that the series put out, let alone had me asking myself “is this possibly the most exhilarating piece of cinema I’ve ever seen?”
The film opens as any ‘Mission: Impossible’ would; exciting yet almost playful, setting a frisky tone for the rest of the film to follow. However, this wasn’t the case with ‘Mission Impossible: Fallout.’ Instead of succeeding the tone set in that opening scene, we are instead launched into a different sort of movie, one that takes nearly every single cinematic medium and carries each one to the next level: the score finds a way to be inventive and fresh, playing with themes of new and old, and even adding in a Marine Corps drum in a rhythmic fashion that is perfectly in sync with punches, kicks, and Tom Cruise’s running feet making contact against the the ground as he pumps his arms faster than anything I’ve ever seen; the cinematography, playing with beautiful palettes of gray, blue, orange makes for a much more visually investing film than the previous entries (it’s also worth mentioning that the cinematographer, Rob Hardy, also shot this year’s ‘Annihilation,’ making the the two best looking films of 2018 from his hands); set pieces that put the opera house and Burj Khalifa sequences to shame, and a physical performance from Tom Cruise that rivals that of Keaton and Chaplin. The final outcome is an extreme force of nature that ipso facto makes every other ‘Mission: Impossible’ entry seem like a student made film.
In order for an action film to be successful purely in the department of action, it has one primary job that needs to be implemented: escalation in everything from the stakes to the setpieces. Most of the ‘Mission: Impossible’ films have struggled with this as many have peaked part way through, leaving the remaining runtime not nearly as exciting. ‘Rogue Nation,’ for instance, was in desperate need of a third act set piece. You don’t want your film to peak in the first act, which is what happens when you showcase Tom Cruise hanging onto the side of a moving airplane in the first five minutes. When starting that high, there isn’t anywhere else to go but down. ‘Fallout’ is special because it doesn’t hold back but yet manages to top itself until the very end. Any director should want his or her audience to truly believe the film has peaked because what has been displayed is so remarkable that they are unable to envision something of greater force. However, taking the audience by surprise and delivering something of even greater excitement not shackled by the confinements of what is thought to be... impossible is where ‘Fallout’ succeeds more than any other action that has come before it.
My jaw dropped during the HALO jump that occurred a mere twenty minutes into the runtime, but instead of giving me time to recover, my jaw just stayed dropped because the relentless set pieces come one after another, each delivered with such ferocity and outdoing the insanity of the last. It becomes apparent that you’re watching something special when there’s a thirty minute set piece midway through that has three action scenes within that one set piece but manages to get topped just fifteen minutes later.
Many of the action sequences found in ‘Fallout’ are commonly found in most films in this genre, except each one here outdoes every other in cinema. The fist fights in which so much force is thrown behind each punch that the characters practically have to reload their arms, the chase sequences that are captured with such energy and intimacy, the gunfights in which I haven’t heard such piercing sound effects since Michael Mann’s ‘Heat,’ the foot chases in which Tom Cruise pumps his arms with such violence and momentum that it literally made my head spin and the helicopter sequence which just nearly shattered my mind, ‘Fallout’ delivers each classic “type” of action scene that one would find in an action film except ‘Fallout’ does it better than any film that came before it.
McQuarrie’s god-level directing always goes the extra mile to bring us in the very heart of the action. That HALO jump could’ve simply been a cool jump sequence, but the way the camera tracks Cruise looking over the edge of the ramp, slowly raising above him to showcase the conditions he’s about to jump into before following him in a mindblowing long take in which the IMAX camera is strapped to the chest of photographer Craig O’Brien who brilliantly captures our characters spinning wildly out of control in a sweeping piece of choreography not only made for pure cinematic wonder but managed the top the technological prowess on display in Christopher Nolan’s ‘Dunkirk.’
The best way I can describe the film is that it plays out like a running relay, with each sequence acting as one of the running legs in that particular race. Each leg is a burst of energy but as soon as it’s over the baton is passed on to the next leg, leaving no room to unwind from the unparalleled, exasperating tension. As a result, you’re physically exhausted by the time the film comes to a close.
By the end of this film I was practically in tears, not because it was particularly emotive in the sense of themes resonating deeply with me, but because everything I saw was mindblowing to an absurd fucking degree.
It’s still hard to focus at this point but hot take: this might be the greatest action movie ever made.
___________________________________________
It was fifteen minutes into ‘Mission Impossible: Fallout’ that I realized this long running franchise wasn’t just back for another fun adventure, but that Christopher McQuarrie had reprised his role as director with intent to leave an indelible mark on the genre, consequently delivering a cinematic cocktail— a cocktail composed of wide arrangement, making for a weaving mosaic of plotting, unpredictability, and exhilarating set pieces— that I don’t think will be topped anytime soon. It’s a cinematic high unlike anything I’ve seen before.
In a long running franchise of twenty two years, I would never have expected the sixth entry, in what seems would be a long expired and stale franchise by now, to be the best work that the series put out, let alone had me asking myself “is this possibly the most exhilarating piece of cinema I’ve ever seen?”
The film opens as any ‘Mission: Impossible’ would; exciting yet almost playful, setting a frisky tone for the rest of the film to follow. However, this wasn’t the case with ‘Mission Impossible: Fallout.’ Instead of succeeding the tone set in that opening scene, we are instead launched into a different sort of movie, one that takes nearly every single cinematic medium and carries each one to the next level: the score finds a way to be inventive and fresh, playing with themes of new and old, and even adding in a Marine Corps drum in a rhythmic fashion that is perfectly in sync with punches, kicks, and Tom Cruise’s running feet making contact against the the ground as he pumps his arms faster than anything I’ve ever seen; the cinematography, playing with beautiful palettes of gray, blue, orange makes for a much more visually investing film than the previous entries (it’s also worth mentioning that the cinematographer, Rob Hardy, also shot this year’s ‘Annihilation,’ making the the two best looking films of 2018 from his hands); set pieces that put the opera house and Burj Khalifa sequences to shame, and a physical performance from Tom Cruise that rivals that of Keaton and Chaplin. The final outcome is an extreme force of nature that ipso facto makes every other ‘Mission: Impossible’ entry seem like a student made film.
In order for an action film to be successful purely in the department of action, it has one primary job that needs to be implemented: escalation in everything from the stakes to the setpieces. Most of the ‘Mission: Impossible’ films have struggled with this as many have peaked part way through, leaving the remaining runtime not nearly as exciting. ‘Rogue Nation,’ for instance, was in desperate need of a third act set piece. You don’t want your film to peak in the first act, which is what happens when you showcase Tom Cruise hanging onto the side of a moving airplane in the first five minutes. When starting that high, there isn’t anywhere else to go but down. ‘Fallout’ is special because it doesn’t hold back but yet manages to top itself until the very end. Any director should want his or her audience to truly believe the film has peaked because what has been displayed is so remarkable that they are unable to envision something of greater force. However, taking the audience by surprise and delivering something of even greater excitement not shackled by the confinements of what is thought to be... impossible is where ‘Fallout’ succeeds more than any other action that has come before it.
My jaw dropped during the HALO jump that occurred a mere twenty minutes into the runtime, but instead of giving me time to recover, my jaw just stayed dropped because the relentless set pieces come one after another, each delivered with such ferocity and outdoing the insanity of the last. It becomes apparent that you’re watching something special when there’s a thirty minute set piece midway through that has three action scenes within that one set piece but manages to get topped just fifteen minutes later.
Many of the action sequences found in ‘Fallout’ are commonly found in most films in this genre, except each one here outdoes every other in cinema. The fist fights in which so much force is thrown behind each punch that the characters practically have to reload their arms, the chase sequences that are captured with such energy and intimacy, the gunfights in which I haven’t heard such piercing sound effects since Michael Mann’s ‘Heat,’ the foot chases in which Tom Cruise pumps his arms with such violence and momentum that it literally made my head spin and the helicopter sequence which just nearly shattered my mind, ‘Fallout’ delivers each classic “type” of action scene that one would find in an action film except ‘Fallout’ does it better than any film that came before it.
McQuarrie’s god-level directing always goes the extra mile to bring us in the very heart of the action. That HALO jump could’ve simply been a cool jump sequence, but the way the camera tracks Cruise looking over the edge of the ramp, slowly raising above him to showcase the conditions he’s about to jump into before following him in a mindblowing long take in which the IMAX camera is strapped to the chest of photographer Craig O’Brien who brilliantly captures our characters spinning wildly out of control in a sweeping piece of choreography not only made for pure cinematic wonder but managed the top the technological prowess on display in Christopher Nolan’s ‘Dunkirk.’
The best way I can describe the film is that it plays out like a running relay, with each sequence acting as one of the running legs in that particular race. Each leg is a burst of energy but as soon as it’s over the baton is passed on to the next leg, leaving no room to unwind from the unparalleled, exasperating tension. As a result, you’re physically exhausted by the time the film comes to a close.
By the end of this film I was practically in tears, not because it was particularly emotive in the sense of themes resonating deeply with me, but because everything I saw was mindblowing to an absurd fucking degree.
It’s still hard to focus at this point but hot take: this might be the greatest action movie ever made.
(Definite callbacks to Foreign Correspondent and Saboteur, of all things, just as Rogue Nation distinctly recalled The Man who Knew Too Much.) 
)