Critic Reviews

It’s the kind of pure, straight-no-chaser pop fun that not only keeps taking your breath away over and over again, it restores your occasionally shaky faith in summer blockbusters.

Simply put, Mission: Impossible – Fallout is the best action movie you will see this year. You’ll probably leave the theater overcome with an urge to go jumping from building to building.

OK, McQuarrie may not have De Palma’s sweat-drop precision, John Woo’s craziness or the impish wit of Brad Bird, but his mastery of logistics here is easily sufficient to make it the blockbuster of the summer.

He’s only Tom Cruise because nobody else is willing to be — or maybe he’s only Tom Cruise so that nobody else has to be. Either way, Fallout is the film he’s always promised us, and it was totally worth the wait.

The sixth film in the series is among the most outstanding, delivering a near-exhausting amount of stupendous action sequences paired with deft character drama and the requisite life-or-death stakes. Fallout is a testament to writer-director Christopher McQuarrie, who gives the proceedings a witty, sophisticated grandeur, and yet the film belongs to Cruise and his seemingly limitless passion for putting himself and his audience through the wringer.

McQuarrie brings grace and grit, and Cruise brings it, period. This quick-witted, fleet-footed franchise shows no sign of flagging.

McQuarrie clearly believes in creating coherent set pieces: His combat scenes are tense, muscular, and clean, shot and edited in such a way that the spatial geography makes sense. He places audiences just over Cruise’s shoulder, or staring into the actor’s face as he grimaces with exertion.

A combination of thrilling stunts, insane daring and clever writing make this a stunning piece of action cinema. Just be sure to take your heart meds first, and hold on tight.

McQuarrie also builds on the last film’s self-aware level of wit and, most importantly, its set-piece-crafting sophistication. No action sequence is allowed to peter out, or be chopped to ribbons in the edit, or lean on the crutch of CG augmentation.

Writer and director Christopher McQuarrie borrows just the right amount of familiar spy tropes in his second “M:I” outing, and his film, while intelligent and witty, never becomes too self-serious or chatty. It’s the best night out at the movies so far this summer.