Mission: Impossible – Fallout

What can you say that hasn’t already been said? Movies like this are preposterous, so unless you can check your critical faculties at the gate, there’s no point in seeing them. But if you are just looking for a highly entertaining action movie, they don’t get much better than this. And there is that little frisson of incredulity in knowing that that crazy Scientologist is actually doing most of this stuff. Cruise is apparently nerveless, fearless. He was hurt filming this one, and the whole production ground to a halt for eight weeks … and everyone, from the key grip and the gaffer and the best boy to the teamsters and craft services truck, got paid for all that time of doing nothing. The price? I read that it was $80,000,000. That’s just for the idle time, you understand, not the $178,000,000 in the production budget. (It was covered by insurance.) A budget nudging a fifth of a billion dollars … and who cares? Wiki says it has made $791,100,000 so far. It was also a critical success, and I agree. I had a good time.

But you just wonder. In the last three films Cruise has run down the side of the Burj Khalifa, clung to the outside of a military cargo jet as it took off and flew away, and for this one he made one hundred highly dangerous HALO (High Altitude Low Opening) parachute jumps from 25,000 feet. (But don’t forget, the camera crew had to make those jumps, too.) That is not even to mention the motorcycle stunts and other stuff. These films have really become a series of “Can you top this?” challenges. You can’t help but wonder … Where do they go for MI:7 and MI:8, already scheduled for 2021 and 2022? It boggles the mind.