I know film reviews isn't my usual sort of thing, but I went to see the new Mission Impossible this weekend and I thought this would be the best place to share my take on the new film.
Context
I love Mission: Impossible films, in fact, it may well be my favourite film series in general. I've been waiting for this to come out for months, and booked my tickets as soon as they were available. Mission: Impossible Fallout was probably my favourite film of all time until now, I think Dead Reckoning improved on it in the right ways and had some great set pieces and a good warning about the dangers of AI.
❗️ Warning ❗️
I want to try to keep this as spoiler free as possible. If you want to go in with no spoilers at all, stop here.
Plot Summary
The film is centred on an ultra intelligent Artificial Intelligence called "The Entity" that developed thoughts of its own and broke free of command. It knows everything about everybody and uses that to make accurate judgements on the future. The Entity can edit or erase anything from any digital system, and has spread itself across the world to the point where no computer can be deemed safe any more.
Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is tasked with capturing the physical keys that supposedly are able to control the AI, but Ethan believes that no one should have access to it and goes rouge and launches his own mission to destroy it.
Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson), Ethan's partner from Mission Impossible Fallout, has one half of the key. Ethan meets Grace (Hayley Atwell), a talent thief who unbeknownst to Ethan was hired by The White Widow (Vanessa Kirby) to get the second half for her, however, she eventually switches sides and joins the IMF.
This all leads to a fight on The Orient Express, where Ethan Hunt and Grace must prevent the keys from falling into the hands of Gabriel (Esai Morales), a man who serves The Entity and is hell-bent on world domination.
The best bits
The stunts. There are so many massive action set pieces in this film, enough in my opinion to outdo all the other Mission films combined. An example of this is when Tom Cruise rode a motorbike off of a cliff during the film's climax. There is a behind the scenes of this that really shows the dedication Tom has to the film industry:
Alongside that, the film is set globally and has some epic locations that really allow a scene to shine. The film also uses witty writing and even goes as far as to take stabs at some classic Mission: Impossible stereotypes
Critiques
There isn't too much to dislike about this film, so I'll make it short:
- There isn't enough of Benji (Simon Pegg) and Luther (Ving Rhames)
- Some moments felt like cop-outs that weren't explained enough
- Sometimes it was hard to understand who was on who's side
Overall
Overall, this was a great film, and was action-packed, emotional and funny all at once. Don't be deterred by the two-part factor, I was expecting it to end on a cliffhanger, but instead it wrapped up the events of Part One nicely, while leaving the door open for a sequel.
If I were to give one piece of advice, it would be to see this in the biggest and best cinema you could find. I saw this on the biggest screen in the UK in IMAX, and it was definitely worth the extra.
