Mission: Impossible - Fallout

Well that was thrillingly relentless. Pacing crafted with almost laser precision, neither a minute nor scene wasted with padding so the 2.5 hour running time zipped by. Every set-piece felt crafted to propel the adventure forward and keep the audience properly tense. The Parisian section was probably the high-point, transitioning from a crunchy fist-fight to an extended car-chase through the city that echoed John Frankenheimer's 'Ronin'.

The previous MI ran out of steam somewhat by the final act, yet with the return of director Christopher McQuarrie, lessons were obviously learned so the end product here was a film that never dropped the ball, nor let the tension diminish for a second. The death-defying stunts Tom Cruise indulges in were as impressive and hair raising as ever sure, but this time round felt integrated into the overall pacing instead of an intermission.

Honestly, at this juncture, the franchise is simply a better crafted, punchier & visceral set of films than the sibling James Bond series, itself stuck as a cynical, commercialised property content to tick boxes and flaunt luxury watches. Mission Impossible succeeds in remembering the basics in action cinema, and applying those simple approaches expertly without much fuss or hype. Having a lead going through an extended midlife crisis / adrenaline addiction probably helps too (compare the bland green-screen enhanced helicopter scene in Spectre vs. the pure spectacle of Tom Cruise actually piloting a chopper across a mountain range).

All the Mission Impossible films do that with the credits IIRC: it's a nod towards the old TV show, where they'd show fleeting moments of the action from the episode you're about to watch. It's still a weird eccentricity that modern shows occasionally do (Black Lightning for instance, the Battlestar remake also from a few years back), but definitely old-school.