CHRISTOPHER McQUARRIE

Bil’s rating (out of 5):  BBBB.5.   USA, 2018.  Bad Robot, Paramount Pictures,  Skydance Media, TC Productions. Screenplay by Christopher McQuarrie, based on the television series created by Bruce Geller.  Cinematography by Rob Hardy.  Produced by J.J. Abrams, Raphael Benoliel, Tom Cruise, Christopher McQuarrie, Jake Myers.  Music by Lorne Balfe.  Production Design by Peter Wenham.  Costume Design by Jeffrey Kurland.  Film Editing by Eddie Hamilton.   It’s been twenty-two years since Tom Cruisefirst starred in this American James Bond franchise, and it hasn’t lost its power to thrill, which is amazing considering that the plot involves the same variables every time:  a device is in the wrong hands, and Ethan Hunt is willing to do whatever it takes to get it back, and generally does so in the nick of time. 

Any numbness to the story’s familiarity is overcome by superb execution in this wonderful sixth chapter, with Hunt covering Berlin, Paris, London and eventually the mountains of Kashmir in an effort to recover a payload of plutonium that an unknown madman wants to use to cause mass destruction.  Henry Cavill is excellent in a work suit and daddy mustache as the agent who is assigned to tail Hunt by CIA director Angela Bassett, suspicious as she is of Alec Baldwin‘s IMF and what she calls their Halloween ways.  Determined to out-do the famous British spy franchise, Cruise can’t find a building too high to climb or run across, or a flying vehicle he won’t dangle from to make sure the world is saved, and director Christopher McQuarrie wisely lets the action sequences take center stage while the details of the plot are explained in gobbledy-gook dialogue scenes that require none of your attention.  Older and not as anxious to prove his cocky young man persona as he was in the past, Cruise’s personality displays a level of self-deprecating humour missing in the earlier chapters, making the ego issues that have inspire him to insist on these obnoxiously ridiculous stunts at his age so much easier to bear.  It’s worth noting that he surrounds himself, Fast and Furious style, with a terrific group of supporting characters that he holds onto (unlike in the first film when he killed them in the first act).  Vanessa Kirby is deliciously fun as a slinky arms dealer (whose crime fetish Brian De Palma would have exploited better, just saying) while Rebecca Ferguson shines in her returning role as the motorcycle-riding agent who is always around to help our hero out of his worst messes.  The climactic scene aboard two helicopters is truly astonishing.