Mission: Impossible – Fallout (2018)
Directed by: Christopher McQuarrie
Premise: The sixth film in the series. Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his team pursue three plutonium cores that anarchist group The Syndicate intends to weaponize.
What Works: The sixth Mission: Impossible feature marked a change for the series. A few recurring characters aside, each film was more or less self-contained and each production was helmed by a different director who brought their own cinematic style. Director Christopher McQuarrie returned for Fallout which is a direct sequel to its predecessor. After foiling The Syndicate and apprehending its leader Solomon Lane (Sean Harris), Fallout is about the terrorist organization regrouping and striking back. That creates new complications and pushes the story into new places. Fallout strikes a balance between familiar Mission: Impossible features like face masks, double crosses, and motorcycle chases while breaking up the formula. Ethan Hunt and his team are not disavowed and Fallout avoids the heist scenarios of other Mission: Impossible entries. Instead, Hunt goes undercover and Fallout recalls the intrigue of the original Mission: Impossible. But it goes beyond that; Hunt risks being morally compromised and his attempt to accomplish his mission without sacrificing his team or civilians adds to the drama and makes Hunt heroic. Fallout has a variety of villainous characters. Solomon Lane is revised with a new look and this film plays up his ideological commitments. New character The White Widow is a gangster played well by Vanessa Kirby. Other characters are morally ambiguous such as a CIA agent played by Henry Cavill. Fallout climaxes with a well-executed sequence crosscutting a helicopter chase and a bomb diffusion. Although the scenario reworks the climax of Ghost Protocol it is a showstopping ending.
What Doesn’t: Bringing back director Christopher McQuarrie for Fallout makes sense in that it continues the story begun in Rogue Nation. However, at this point the Mission: Impossible series loses the novelty of new filmmaking voices. And since McQuarrie’s filmmaking style is fairly straightforward, Fallout feels aesthetically indistinguishable from its two predecessors. The plotting is a bit flimsy. There are some big twists and when certain characters’ identities and agendas are revealed it creates credibility problems for the rest of the movie. As the title implies, Fallout is about Ethan Hunt and his companions facing consequences of their actions and the undercover story entertains moral ambiguity. The Syndicate and its mastermind see civilization on the road to collapse as a result of overpopulation, ecological catastrophe, and corruption. They want to destroy the establishment to save humanity from itself. Hunt and his team foil the Syndicate but the underlying global problems remain. Fallout entertains complex problems but it ultimately returns to simplistic solutions.
Disc extras: The 4K release includes a commentary tracks, an isolated score track, featurettes, deleted scenes, storyboards, and a trailer.
Bottom Line: Mission: Impossible – Fallout is one of the better installments of this series. It provides everything viewers would want from a Mission: Impossible movie while also breaking away from some of the conventions of this franchise. The filmmakers flirt with bigger ideas but ultimately commit to the simplicity of popcorn entertainment.
Episode: #710 (August 5, 2018); Revised #1049 (May 25, 2025)