'Run, Tom, Run!' Cruise Is Back To His Action-packed Best In New 'Mission: Impossible' Film

mission: impossible — fallout

Run, Tom, Run! See how Tom runs. See Tom run down streets and alleys, through funerals, and, of course, along the tops of buildings, leaping from one roof to the next. See Tom ride motorcycles, too, of course. And, then, fly a helicopter in what’s —I’m struggling to even think of a contender— the greatest helicopter-chase/dogfight sequence in cinema history. When the fate of the world is on the line, and there’s a ticking-clock countdown on a bomb-timer set to detonate a nuclear device, there’s only one man who can save us: the Level VIII Operating Thetan, Thomas Cruise Mapother IV.

Okay, sure, in Mission: Impossible – Fallout, the sixth film in the franchise, Tom Cruise is again playing a character named (*checks press notes*) ‘Ethan Hunt’. As a recurring touchstone in a mercurial career, this character has been a constant, first appearing on screen in 1996; back when Vanessa Kirby, who engages in sexy-sexual-tension banter with Cruise, herein, was 9 years old. At this point, ‘Ethan Hunt’ is the definitive role in the Cruise canon. Which is perfect, given that he’s effectively just playing the persona of Tom Cruise.

At a time in which the box-office power and cinematic lustre of movie-stars is dimming, lost in the light pollution from the mega-watt MCU’s monolith of cosplay-friendly IP, Cruise is still going about the Tom Cruise business; still playing manly men of action who run, ride motorcycles, and save the world (with no mention ever made of Sea Org slavery). Sometimes, he does so in a transcendent work of art, like Edge Of Tomorrow. Other times, it’s in something as half-assed as Jack Reacher: Never Go Back. If you’re truly lucky, you’ll get to witness a glorious car-crash like The Mummy.

Fallout isn’t bad Cruise, good Cruise, or meta-Cruise. It’s straight Cruise. Pure Cruise. True Cruise. Just a man running, riding motorcycles, constantly jostling for alpha-male status, flirting with women half his age, refusing to play by the book, and taking the fate of the world as his own personal responsibility.

There’s a story, here, too, I guess: a series of elaborate double and triple-crosses that delight in the flourish of the reveal, the film a host of cinematic sleights-of-hand. In and amongst such, there’s: Henry Cavill in a showstopping moustache, playing Cruise’s collaborateur and rival; Angela Bassett as his Cruise-mistrusting overseer; Sean Harris running back his “anarchist” villain role from last time; Kirby as the world’s most glamorous/toffee-accented arms-dealer (those eyelashes!); and lots of anonymous men running around carrying semi-automatic weapons whilst clad in dapper menswear. “Why’d you have to make this so complicated?” Cavill says, at one point, once another devilish reversal has been revealed; though even more on-the-nose is when he confesses “I’m playing a role”, the theme of all this subterfuge made manifest.

Within the film, Cruise is also playing a role: Ethan bubblegum Hunt assumes the guise of ‘John Lark’, an unknown, shadowy figure of international terrorism who may or may not actually exist. Of course, even when undercover, Cruise is just as Cruisey as ever. Rather than trying to blend in with his new milieu, he starts fights, derails plans, follows his instincts, and rides and dies with his trusted crew —Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, Rebecca Ferguson, Alec Baldwin— so hard that he just says phrases like “I need you to trust me!” aloud.

And trust is put in Cruise’s hands, not just by characters, but filmmakers, producers, audience members. Fallout comes directed by Cruise’s prized off-sider Christopher McQuarrie —a seven-time Cruise collaborator, including directing Jack Reacher and Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation — and the two combine on a host of amazing action set-pieces, which feel driven forward by Cruise’s persona, ambition, and devotion to self-staged stuntwork.

So, Tom doesn’t just run and ride motorcycles, but HALO jumps from a plane passing over downtown Paris, hangs from a rope tied to a helicopter piloted through the snowy mountains of Kashmir, hangs from the bottom of a cage-lift so he can have a mano-a-mano thrown-gauntlet chat with Cavill, and gets in a glorious, porcelain-smashing public-bathroom dust-up with Liang Yang, a fight coordinator last seen in the classic Throne Room scene in The Last Jedi.

Oh, and, of course, he runs. Boy, does he run. The greatest shot in Mission: Impossible – Fallout comes when Tom runs across a rooftop and a swooping tracking shot cranes down, floating along next to him as he legs it, face full of exertion. Then, he jumps, and the camera cranes up, looking down from above as Tom hurtles over, and across, the between-buildings abyss; the whole staged in one wildly-ambitious take. These leaps are, as ever, leaps of faith; audiences hitching their time-killing hopes and value-for-money cash purchase on one of cinema’s last old-fashioned movie-stars.

In an era in which digital technicians can build worlds, destroy cities, remove moustaches and bring actors back from the dead, Cruise feels like a rock to cling to; the Mission: Impossible movies blockbuster products so action-driven, practically-shot, and irony-free as to feel quaint. In an entertainment landscape undergoing radical change, Tom remains a constant. Long may he run.