All Missions: Impossible

A supreme nothing of a film. Cruise at his most characterized when pretending to be an off-putting and over-observant Virginia Department of Transportation worker. After that, what? He chases a nothing weapon, pursued by a nothing villian, controlled by a nothing mastermind. He steals the nothing weapon from the highly guarded tower holding it, and we don’t even get to watch it happen.

There’s a cool running scene, though. And the moment when Cruise dies and his wife needs to take over and kill a bunch of terrorists is genuinelly thrilling; the only instance of real danger we ever believe.

In close contention with the first for my favorite of the series.

Ilsa and the uncertainty around her character’s motivations is fun spy thriller material, but what really makes this magical is that Cruise and Hunt blend in a strangely critical way. Hunt/Cruise is a dangerous and paranoid thrill-seeker, and everyone around him can see that, but they’re perhaps too afraid to talk him down and charge forward anyway. It’s a shame, but understandable, that the follow-up discards this entirely and casts his unhinged tendencies as chivalric instead.

Succeeds in distilling the series to what the last few have been building up to: a sublimation of all talents towards the worship of Tom Cruise. There are no real characters here besides Ethan Hunt, and he himself is barely a character. Instead, we get fawning tributes and pained longing gazes from a cast of only-potentially interesting people.

Paris is the best example of this transformation from riveting villain to furniture.

Before the screening, a trailer played proudly crooning “Rihanna is Smurfette”. Perhaps cinema isn’t worth saving.