Rating: ★★★½ (3.5/5)
Exposition! In case you forgot what happened over the last thirty years of Mission Impossible movies, Tom Cruise and company are here to tell you all about it in an exposition packed cold open thanks to a tape from IMF.
Speaking of the tape from the IMF. Did anyone else wonder how they got Ethan the tape if he’s on the run and they don’t know where he is? I mean, if they used a dead drop they could stake it out, if they sent it to him then they know where he is, and if they picked someone to take it to him wouldn’t they just follow? I had a lot of issues with that, so let’s just put that in the back of our minds for a minute.
Most of this movie is not there for the plot. It’s there to show you some incredible action set pieces and kind of blow your mind at all the things Tom Cruise is willing to do for the sake of a killer action sequence. The underwater stuff and the airplane stuff most notably. They’re incredible stunts and stunts that he does himself. Which is both great and where the problem lies.
How much of this movie was I watching Ethan Hunt and how much of it was I spending amazed at what Tom Cruise pulled off? I feel like I mostly held onto the threads in this plot even though some of them weren’t really working for me to begin with. I wish I could have been lost in the movie a little more and not had my mind on what Tom was up to on the screen. It’s kind of the difference of watching a movie and watching a stunt show. This is trying to thread the needle and not really doing a good job.
At the end of the day, I know that we needed the doodad to fit into the goober so that the end of the world could be avoided. There’s so much technical nonsense going on that it made it really difficult for me given that I’m also a tech nerd and a lot of their stuff just didn’t make any sense.
Now, all that being said, it was a fun movie. I had a good time watching it and I’d watch it again. I don’t think it was anything to write home about in terms of story, but it was a good “turn your brain off” movie where you can just go out and enjoy yourself. So get some popcorn, sit down, and enjoy your action flick. There’s nothing wrong with that.