So I flew home on Friday night from a conference I was at all week for work, and came back with a bad sinus infection. To pass the time and try to get well before starting work Monday, I thought I would watch all 6 Mission: Impossible movies and write little reviews of them once I was done. The only rules were to be done by the close of the weekend, and that all reviews had to be written during the credits roll.
With that in mind, here's the reviews!
Mission: Impossible
Tom Cruise looks like he’s a BABY! Overall an enjoyable spy movie with some fun action elements. I had never seen the computer room infiltration scene before in its entirety, and MAN does it hold up. Great stunt work and really tense, throughout. I also loved how he uses the gum explosive trick twice, giving you two callbacks for the price of one setup. The closing scene with the train and helicopter was kinda silly, but still fun! Well made movie and a good start to the marathon.
Mission: Impossible II
It’s like if you bottled the year 2000 in a can of Mountain Dew and chugged it while doing a sick BMX trick. LOTTA JOHN WOO HERE, with some crazy stunt work and chase scenes/shoot-outs. The man loves the sudden cuts to slow-mo, and by the end of the film it’s nauseating. Fun note: Hans Zimmer is the composer on this one, and there’s a lot of Lisa Gerrard (sp?) vocal notes throughout. This is probably because Zimmer was hot off doing the work for Gladiator (released 2000 as well), where Gerrard’s vocals give a real haunting feel to the score and drive home the emotional moments.
Anyway, compared to the first film, it’s incredibly over-the-top. The first act feels clunky as hell, and I read on IMDB that Woo had to cut the overall run time down from 3.5 hours to 2, which probably explains a lot. By the end of the movie, I was yelling MAXIMUM WOO (Crysis, anyone?) at the TV anytime something super John Woo was happening. Wasn’t really for me, but worth a view for a fun trip down nostalgia lane.
Mission: Impossible III
It’s JJ Abrams’ turn at the helm, and I think he totally nails it. This movie does a fantastic job of humanizing Ethan Hunt into an actual person as opposed to a one-man ass-kicking machine. The movie also has a killer supporting cast including Philip Seymour Hoffman as a legit scary bad guy and Jonathan Rhys Meyers (REMEMBER THAT GUY?) as a member of Ethan’s squad. The emotional weight the movie lends early on makes sure that there’s real stakes, and our bad guy has some teeth to boot. I love a villain who makes our hero seem helpless at times, and PSH is a ruthless dude in this one.
Another bit I really enjoyed about this movie was the teamwork on display. I think the first two movies leaned heavily on Ethan Hunt being a solo operative with light support and comic relief. In this one, each team member has something important to do and it feels like the mission can’t happen without them helping Ethan out. Part of that is a choice that has a lot of our action/mission scenes playing out with a more militaristic vibe, which is a shift movies took post 9/11 in my opinion. One last note, I thought it was great that the McGuffin in this film (the Rabbit’s Foot) remained a true McGuffin through to the end. No lengthy explanation of why this thing is so important, it’s just a dumb prop to support the human story at play here. Favorite one so far, but now it’s time for bed before starting Ghost Protocol (2011) in the morning.
Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol
I found this film kind of…boring? Lots of gadgets and use of humor throughout make it feel more like a Pierce Brosnan era Bond film as opposed to a Mission: Impossible movie. BTW, this is the first film where Simon Pegg is a fully-fledged member of the team. Action is OK and there’s some fun scenes (I enjoyed the car park sequence), but it mostly feels like the movie is team IMF vs. fucking up the mission a lot. The bit with the Russian intelligence officers being after them felt kind of tacked on as well. The Burj Khalifa tower climbing sequence was a lot of build up for what seemed like no payoff. Hey guys, I have to climb the side of the tallest tower in the world to plug in a USB drive. Whatever, I guess. Probably my least favorite of the bunch so far, I’d take the JOHN WOO ACTION EXTRRRRAVAGANZA over whatever this thing is.
Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation
Here we have a return to something of a mix between the original 1996 film and 2011’s M:I3, but it all works well. Big set piece at the opera! Crazy stunts! Double agents and crazy spy stuff! It all works out in Rogue Nation, and is great fun. Simon Pegg is back again full time for this flick, and he has more to do than just be the techy comic relief. We also get some Alec Baldwin as the pushy CIA director a la 2011’s installment with Lawrence Fishburne. I think the only thing that doesn’t stand up well is the scene in the water-cooler-thingy, which appears to have been done with a lot of assistance from CGI. It’s tense, but it looks like a video game the whole time in a movie with a ton of killer practical work. Kind of a shame. Anyway, I enjoyed it and hope the series continues down this path as opposed to Ghost Protocol’s plodding tediousness.
Mission: Impossible – Fallout
This is Chris McQuarrie back at the helm directing again, and I’m pretty sure this installment has everything you could ask for. BIG TOM CRUISE STUNT WORK! SHOOTOUTS! HELICOPTER CHASES! MASKS! TWISTS AND TURNS! I also have to say, I love the score in Fallout as well. The whole thing just works, and it’s a joy to watch from beginning to end.
One thing I noticed early on that continues throughout the film is that there’s a callback to every previous Mission: Impossible film in Fallout. Here’s my loose tally:
- M:I I – The White Widow’s mother is supposedly Max
- M:I 2 – Ethan climbs a sheer rock face
- M:I 3 – The whole plot line around Julia reflected in the third act
- Ghost Protocol – The Secretary is killed by our baddies
- Rogue Nation – Solomon Lane makes an appearance to drive our 2nd act
The fight choreography in this one is great, and I definitely re-watched the bathroom fight scene 2-3 times just to see all the nuances there. My only gripe is that it’s maybe too obvious that Henry Cavill is our secret bad guy, but he totally nails it as a villain once the cat is out of the bag, plot wise. I can see why he wasn’t about to shave that moustache for Justice League re-shoots. Absolutely my favorite of the series, and I hope Tom Cruise and Chris McQuarrie team up for another installment of this franchise, especially if we get more movies like Fallout.
Anyway, I'm going to sleep. Thanks for reading!
TL;DR: Watched all the Mission: Impossible movies. Ratings are roughly:
- 7/10
- 6/10
- 8/10
- 5/10
- 8/10
- 9/10
Submitted March 11, 2019 at 10:21AM by GernBlanst0n https://ift.tt/2XOjwmi