Wasn't sure what to spoiler tag exactly as I kind of have very mild spoilers throughout. So...
BEWARE OF MINOR SPOILERS!
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Hmm...
It was pretty good?
I am really trying to figure out where the extra levels of hype are coming from with this one. I guess after the past couple everyone was just primed and ready for this one? To me it was pretty much on par with the rest of the series (well, excluding 2 and somewhat 3, which are below par). Lots and lots of plot, exposition, plot, exposition, action, plot, exposition, plot, action, action, action, plot, drama, action, action, action, Action, ACTION, CARTOON LEVELS OF ACTION.
It definitely seems to hit a bit of a stride somewhere around the bathroom scene. Starts to gain momentum, has that lovely collateral damage vision for Hunt, really good setpiece AND THEN... gets bogged down in its own plot machinations again, starts to feel unwieldy, then delivers the expected third act pyrotechnics which basically amount to Tom Cruise flying a helicopter very unsafely.
Yeah, the Fury Road comparisons did this movie absolutely no favors in my opinion.
The action is good but it's not that sort of distinctive, relentlessly building and story communicative, artful kind of experience that the action was in Fury Road. Here it's very much Mission Impossible/Hollywood setpieces, well-crafted but nothing that will really stick in my brain other than maybe the bathroom scene. And some of the shots from the street chase.
Henry Cavill is once again more of a physical presence than anything. I was pretty non-plussed by him and thought he was actually kind of bad in parts. People love him because of the mustache and arms loaded meme. I think Cruise and Ferguson were the only consistent performers in this one, really, though Ving does get a really nice moment with Ilsa late in the film (even if the whole set-up of that scene is awkward af). Some of the shaky acting/line-readings/performance beats really didn't help all the plot/back-story dumps go down any smoother.
The twist in the film is SOOOO predictable I was thinking there had to be another twist on top of it, but no. And then because you know what the twist is going to be, you can see how it will get outed from a mile away. So that whole part of the film, I mean, there was no dramatic relevance to it because of how the characters were set up in relation to it, so it was just a big fat nothing and an eye-roll for me. The way they use it to add to the personal stakes for Ethan, though, is so ridiculous and contrived... I mean, I don't know what to say. Turn my brain off, I guess?
McQuarrie seems to have established himself as a very solid director of action. Funny because you think his strength would be in the characters and the writing, but other than a somewhat superficial sheen of intelligence, I found most of this story to be about as dumb as your average Hollywood action flick, and also just about as thematically relevant. When a grand statement is made at the end of the film that the world "NEEDS the IMF" it felt like it was supposed to carry some weight with me and my life and in my world, and I'm still trying to figure out what that is. Like, uh, intelligence agencies and counter-terrorism units are good, is that it? But as compromised as those entities are for most of this film, I don't think you can even take that away from it.
But I guess it's good that the world has heroes and that those heroes have a good support network? Yeah, we will go with that. It just doesn't quite resonate because Hunt's heroic acts towards the end of this one feel so unreal you'd think you were watching a Fast & Furious flick.
Anyways, I can't say I hated my time in the theater, it was surely entertaining enough... even if this is yet another Hollywood flick that I thought was unnecessarily long and unfocused and blustery. Like, I am straight up yearning for the days when home video discs actually needed a section for deleted scenes. That said, I do want my shot from the trailer of Hunt almost flying his helicopter into a truck. Seems like a whole (and perhaps more interesting) section of that final setpiece was left out of the film.
Sidenote: this is shot by Rob Hardy, same guy who shot Alex Garland's films, and boy is it a weird experience watching a Mission Impossible movie and constantly thinking, "Uh, yeah, these compositions and the lighting really remind me of Annihilation." I don't know if the gauzy, pastel, soft-lighting and flaring look works great for this type of movie... but it does still kind of work, somehow. And the look of the film aptly hardened up a bit for the final act.
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