MOVIE REVIEW: Mission: Impossible series is showing its age ('Fallout' is No. 6) and winding down

When we first met Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt character, he was a brash young agent, filled with vigor and certainty, even as his world and his team were being murdered around him.

Now, five installments later, Hunt seems a little worse for wear: He has nightmares about letting everyone down, especially his ex-wife, and he seems a bit less focused, even blindsided, from time to time.

The fights hurt a lot more, as does the jumping out of buildings, which leave him with a temporary limp. Worse, early in this installment, he loses a huge payload of weapons-grade plutonium after choosing to save a team member rather than securing the cargo. He's flawed now, and uncharacteristically self-reflective, having finally lived long enough to realize his infallibility was term-limited.

We have arrived at the sixth installment of this respectful franchise -- spread out over 22 years -- and, as with many relationships that continue for that amount of time, you can begin to see some fraying at the edges. Rather than the more standard four to six year lead-time between episodes, writer/director Christopher McQuarrie and his team produced this film in three short years, and one reason you can imagine for the sped-up production window is the age of its principal actors.

Not just the venerable Cruise, who is, as ever, leaping off of buildings, climbing up vertical rock faces, and shimmying up a guide rope to an airborne helicopter at the tender age of 56; but also Ving Rhames (59) and Simon Pegg (48), none of whom are getting younger, and the energy of the series largely resides on the three of them -- plus, newly found love interest Rebecca Ferguson -- to carry it. Cruise has proved to be a Hollywood tank, able to keep trudging (or more accurately dead-sprinting) along, but without him and his commitment to the role of Ethan Hunt, the whole franchise collapses.

There are other clues to the concept's vulnerability as well: With the exception of the second film, helmed by a seemingly listless and disinterested John Woo -- the M:I series has always gone the extra mile beyond the standard action pic. Not content to pack in a theater and give the crowd less than they were expecting, through various high-flying production teams (previous directors include such luminaries as Brian De Palma, J.J. Abrams and Brad Bird), the films have endured because Cruise and Co. have always pushed the envelope, stuntwise, and with thick narrative conceits that somewhat belay their action-flick orientation.

That is, until now. This film starts with a mishmash of previously employed plot points -- a group of rogue mercenary assassins stealing weapons-grade plutonium and negotiating the release and extraction of their fearless leader, with the IMF facing imminent dismissal, and Hunt himself the target of a frame-job that suggests he has finally turned against his country -- finds dissatisfying shortcuts to get its heroes to the fiery climax, and generally seems less inspired than the last trio of entries.

If this installment lags behind the others, it's certainly not from lack of trying on Cruise's part. Regular readers have seen me harsh on some of Tom's choices, and his refusal to relinquish his grip on the high-concept action movie vehicle, of which he is perhaps the sole survivor, but give credit where it's due here: The man gets movies made, and his pledge to the M:I series, including the incredible practical stunt work he does almost entirely himself, is duly impressive.

One of the major ways the series takes its viewers further than most big-budget action fare: It doesn't rely on green-screen magic to make it appear as if their stars are putting themselves at risk. Instead, the series has always put Cruise front and center of their harrowing stunt array.

Here alone, he conducts a high-speed motorcycle chase through the streets of Berlin, leaps from roof to roof over high-rise buildings in Paris, and, heartstoppingly, performs the aforementioned helicopter stunt, a bit that has him seemingly free-fall about 30 feet from the undercarriage of the bird before grabbing the guideline again -- as if to let us know they aren't messing about. ("I find it's best not to look," Pegg's character says of one of Hunt's escapades, a prerogative no doubt echoed from the film's producers and underwriter.)

McQuarrie's film doesn't let down in the stunts department, but as far as a compelling story to hang all those well-crafted set pieces onto? That's where we run into serious trouble. Early in the film, Hunt is on track to acquire the stolen plutonium before he's forced to make a choice between saving someone from his own team, or letting them slip through his fingers.

Choosing the latter, he earns a serious dressing down: IMF is referred to mockingly as "Halloween," a bunch of men in rubber masks trying to fool everyone, by CIA Director Erica Sloan (Angela Bassett), on whose authority Ethan is saddled with one of her agents, August Walker (Henry Cavill, replete with goon mustache), a "hammer" as she puts it. It's not long on their first mission together that Walker proves a clumsy, unexacting sort of fellow, which does not mix well with Hunt and his team of meticulous spy craftspeople.

Nevertheless, Hunt manages to infiltrate the spy ring, making contact with the "White Widow" (Vanessa Kirby), who promises to make the connection with her seller, but only if Hunt, posing as an evil mastermind known only as John Lark, can help extract the evil former dictator Solomon Lane (Sean Harris), the villain from Rogue Nation, and put him back in contact with his army of true-believers.

Eventually, it comes to play that Lane, along with his operatives, have planned not only a massive nuclear upending of human civilization, but also his highly wrought plan to make Hunt almost entirely responsible for it, and the death of everyone he holds dear, as an elaborate revenge plot.

Coddling together bits and pieces from M:I 3, and the last two films, McQuarrie has also taken elements from the recent Bond series, specifically Spectre, and come up with fairly thin plot gruel for us to swallow along with all those spectacular stunts. I guess it depends on what your expectations of these films might be: The action is, as always, formidable, but without the same care given to the storyline, the film is a good deal less satisfying than some of the predecessors.

The opening and closing credits now play like a straight homage to the film's more humble TV roots -- with cast overlays in action segments, and a staccato cut of thrilling moments from the previous films. If what helped make the series feel special before -- it's event-like grandiosity and stunt-blasting outrageousness -- this feels ratcheted down a few notches, slowly winding down.

At this point, Hunt has been exiled, betrayed, disavowed, and targeted for assassination, over and over again, all by his own government. As Walker suggests at one point to his boss, how much longer will Hunt be willing to jump out of planes, free climb impossible heights, and mad sprint through crowded European city streets before finally letting go?

MovieStyle on 07/27/2018