RELEASED: 25th July 2018

DIRECTOR: Christopher McQuarrie

CAST: Tom Cruise, Henry Cavill, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Sean Harris, Vanessa Kirby, Angela Bassett, Michelle Monaghan, Wes Bentley, Frederick Schmidt and Alec Baldwin

BUDGET: $178m

BOX OFFICE WORLDWIDE: $791.1m

AWARDS: None (1 BAFTA nomination)

Following on from the events of Rogue Nation, Ethan Hunt is still hunting down the remaining members of Solomon Lane’s organisation the Syndicate, which have now reformed into a terrorist group known as the Apostles. When Ethan attempts to intercept an exchange of plutonium cores that the Apostles want to give to client John Lark, the mission fails and the Apostles take the plutonium. As the IMF decide the best course of action is to find John Lark and assume his identity to locate and retrieve the plutonium back, the Director of the CIA has operative August Walker shadow Hunt’s every move.

The Mission: Impossible franchise continued to grow during the decade and reached its peak with its final instalment (for this decade at least) in 2018 with Fallout. Fallout sees Christopher McQuarrie returning to the directors chair after Rogue Nation, with the film picking up where the events of Rogue Nation concluded, expanding on the primary villains of the Syndicate-turned-Apostles and having to locate a supposed new leader that is looking to use plutonium cores to cause a catastrophic event. For as long as this franchise as been running, the stunt work here in Fallout is extraordinary, the only comparison I can put it up alongside from this decade would be Mad Max: Fury Road. From the HALO jump, to the Solomon Lane breakout-to-car-bike chase sequence in Paris, to the foot chase in London (Tom Cruise always gotta run) to the helicopter fight in Kashmir, Fallout is an absolute rollercoaster of a thrill-ride when it comes to the practical stunt work and Rob Hardy’s amazing cinematography. I also really enjoyed the score from Lorne Balfe, especially during the Solomon Kane breakout sequence. The team rapport is still solid amongst Hunt, Benji and Luther, in particular how it pokes fun at how they literally figure out stuff on the fly and I like how in the final act how everyone had their part to play. Ethan Hunt is made more vulnerable here and we get more in headspace compared to previous films, as we see not only how his past still haunts him, but how far can he maintain his cover without having to take an innocent life. The film underlines how far Ethan will go to protect the ones he cares about, Augustus doesn’t tie down to no-one, and essentially which one makes the better spy because of it. The performances from the ensemble surrounding Cruise is probably the best in the franchise, Cavill is a great foil to Hunt as bruiser-brawler Walker, Pegg is ever-reliable as Benji, Ferguson is good as Ilsa, Kirby impresses as White Widow and Ving Rhames, who hasn’t had much to do in terms of scenes over the last few instalments (in my opinion) gets a lot more screentime.

FAVOURITE SCENE: There is quite a few scenes to choose from, but the bike chase sequence on the streets of Paris I absolutely adore.

FAVOURITE QUOTE: “Hope is not a strategy.

You must be new.” – August Walker and Isa Faust

DID YOU KNOW: The H.A.L.O skydiving sequence (distance of 7 km / 25000 feet, traveling speed of 265 – 320 km/h) was the last sequence filmed during production, but it was the first stunt designed and required a full year of planning out. The crew had only a limited time window of three minutes a day during sunset to film a jump. Because of strict air aviation regulations in France, it could only be shot in the Emirates. It took Tom Cruise, Henry Cavill, the skydiving camera operator Craig O’Brien (who was instructed to keep a distance of three feet from Cruise while filming) and others involved a total of 106 jumps to get three possible takes. However, to rehearse the sequence, the crew built a custom oxygen helmet with RAF assistance that can be lit up to see a face, and then also built one of the world’s largest wind tunnels for practice. The practice doesn’t end there – Cruise and the other persons involved did five skydives a day with one in the morning, three in the afternoon, and one at dusk. Some of the other cast members turned up to visit, with Simon Pegg saying that he and his co-stars thought multiple times that Cruise was seriously about to die: “It is a daily stress going to work with him, because you don’t know if you are going to see him tomorrow.”