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City Press review: This should be the last Impossible Mission

Mission Impossible: Fallout

Director: Christopher McQuarrie

Starring: Tom Cruise, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg and Vanessa Kirby

Yet again the world is at risk, and the only people equipped to save it are Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his Impossible Missions Force (IMF) compadres.

It all starts out as you might expect: Hunt is at the helm of another top secret mission involving spheres of uranium he hopes to retrieve. Everything goes wrong when his colleague and friend, Luther (Ving Rhames), is held up at gunpoint and the uranium is lost.

Of course Hunt must recover the uranium, and to do so he will need a parachute and a mask that will enable him to assume another person’s identity. Hunt flies through the air, as he often does, and somehow saves the life of another agent shortly before he crashes into the side of a skyscraper. Then he manages to suit up and go down to the party happening in the building.

It’s at this point in the movie that things started going wrong. Just as Cruise has aged, obviously Hunt, his character, has too. Hunt gets his ass handed to him by a bad guy. What is this?

The thin plot – which involves the deadly uranium spheres and a radical group who want to blow up the Vatican – is eclipsed by the fact that Cruise might be a little too old for this shit. You know those signature Mission Impossible scenes of Cruise sprinting around in an attempt to defuse a bomb or precarious situation? Well, in Fallout these scenes are longer than you’d expect, and Cruise’s age is no doubt to blame.

Alec Baldwin, Simon Pegg and the stunning Angela Bassett provide artistic support to a story that won’t feed any hunger for rich dialogue. That said, the film more than caters to those with a passion for exhilarating sequences and clutch moments that only Hunt could brave.

Die-hard Mission Impossible fans should see Fallout as I have a feeling it may be the end of the franchise. The creators will probably get away with this one, but as much as we dig Cruise, he might need to step down from the IMF before the Mission Impossible franchise becomes forced, if it’s not too late already. 

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