Mission: Impossible — Fallout review roundup: Most 'extreme, dangerous-looking' stunts ever assembled

Mission: Impossible — Fallout, the sixth installment in the MI series and the sequel to Mission: Impossible —Rogue Nation, traces an action-packed adventure of the Impossible Missions Force (IMF) led by Ethan Hunt as the team globe-trots to outrun a CIA agent tasked with assassinating them after a mission goes wrong. [caption id=“attachment_4732321” align=“alignleft” width=“825”]  A scene from Mission: Impossible — Fallout. Paramount Pictures[/caption] Starring Tom Cruise (Hunt), Henry Cavill, Ving Rhames and Simon Pegg, the film is scheduled to hit theatres in the United States on 27 July. It’s pre-release reviews have garnered positive responses from critics who have lauded it as the most exhilarating film of the year.  Written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie, the film sequences show Cruise performing really dangerous stunts all over stunning locations in Paris and London. The Hollywood Reporter said, “McQuarrie, the first director ever asked to return for seconds behind the camera on this franchise, succeeds in establishing and more or less maintaining the ideal tone, one that fuses sufficient self-aware humor with the ever-more-outlandish set pieces so as to encourage the audience to enjoy them for what they are — some of the most extreme, sustained and dangerous-looking stunt-reliant action scenes ever assembled.” According to Entertainment Weekly, “It’s time to at least start the conversation whether the M:I films have now eclipsed the Bond movies. It’s not as heretical an idea as it may seem. Speaking of 007, writer-director Christopher McQuarrie’s Fallout is the closest the series has come to Ethan Hunt’s own Skyfall or On Her Majesty’s Secret Service – the sequel that fills in the IMF agent’s personal backstory and the emotional sacrifices he’s made chasing the lunatic villains of the world. It’s a film with not just action, but stakes.” Variety observed, “All signs pointed to it being time for Impossible Mission Force operative Ethan Hunt to gracefully retire. How lucky for us that he didn’t. Not only have the films gotten better since, with each one surpassing the last as the most exciting and ambitious of the lot, but Hunt himself has acquired a gravitas along the way that distinguishes the series from its most obvious inspiration, the James Bond movies of the 1960s, back when Sean Connery was that franchise’s first and only star.” IndieWire remarked, “It doesn’t take long to recognize that Mission: Impossible — Fallout is one of the best action movies ever made. Some will see the light during the first act HALO jump, when Tom Cruise caps off an exhilarating long-take by leaping out of a C-17 at 25,000 feet, aerial photographer Craig O’Brien capturing the stunt through the IMAX lens strapped to his head (your move, Christopher Nolan). Others might cotton to the film’s brilliance during the bareknuckle fight scene that follows in the bathroom of a Parisian nightclub.”