Featured Blu-ray and DVD Review: Mission: Impossible—Fallout
December 3, 2018
Mission: Impossible—Fallout - Buy from Amazon: DVD, Blu-ray Combo Pack, or 4K Ultra HD Combo Pack
Mission: Impossible—Fallout will likely end up being Paramount’s biggest hit released in 2018. (Bumblebee has a very slim shot at topping it.) It also earned some of the best reviews of any wide release of the year. Do I agree with the critical consensus? Or am I in the minority?
The film begins with Ethan Hunt having a nightmare about his job destroying the people he cares for. When he wakes up, he’s given a message and a new assignment. Solomon Lane, who was defeated and captured in Rogue Nation, continues to be a problem, because his old organization has mutated into a new one, The Apostles, one with the same overall goal of tearing down the current world order so a new one will rise in its place. Worse still, they have an opportunity to buy three plutonium cores from an Eastern European mafia and access to a nuclear engineer, Nils Debruuk, who could turn them into weapons over a weekend. He and his team need to track down the plutonium and obtain it as soon as possible.
In the next scene, they’ve tracked it down. We don’t even see it happen. Ethan Hunt, Benji Dunn, and Luther Stickell tracked down the group that has the plutonium and arranged a buy. It happens so fast that if someone told me they forgot to record a couple of pages of the script, I would believe them. The buy looks like it is going to go well, but The Apostles are there and mess things up by kidnapping Luther and demanding the plutonium in exchange for his life. Ethan and Benji are able to save him, but both completely forget about the plutonium and by the time they remember, it’s been stolen. This happened in Justice League with the third Motherbox and people rightfully laughed at that moment.
Ethan Hunt and his team are able to capture Nils Debruuk and trick him into given them enough information to track John Lark. However, after this incident, the CIA is not happy with Ethan’s decision, so Erica Sloan demands a CIA agent of hers go with Ethan when his team goes after John Lark. The head of IMF, Alan Hunley, objects, but the president has already agreed with Erica, so he doesn’t have a choice. With that, August Walker joins the mission.
They learned John Lark was going to meet with Alana Mitsopolis, a.k.a. The White Widow, a weapons dealer who uses a cover as a philanthropist. Ethan Hunt and August Walker will go to the charity event held by the White Widow, intercept John Lark, use their technology to disguise Ethan Hunt as John Lark, and make the buy. While on this mission, they bump into Ilsa Faust, who warns Ethan Hunt that there are people here to kill John Lark, so if he goes ahead with this plan, he will be attacked. He actually uses this to his advantage. After contacting the White Widow, he tells her there are assassins after her, so when he defeats them, he gains her trust. She then takes him back to her estate where she explains the deal. He can get the plutonium spheres for a price, but that price isn’t money, it’s freeing Solomon Lane.
I think this is a good place to stop, as spoilers really start to come in fast after this point.
Mission: Impossible—Fallout is the sixth film in the franchise. How many of these films involve a member of the IMF or someone they are working with betraying the team? Is it all of them? It feels like all of them. This is bad. This is really bad. You can’t have a predictable thriller, because if you are two steps ahead of the plot, then it isn’t thrilling. This happened too many times with this movie to give it full marks. Worse still, I can’t even tell you what I found predictable, because then I would be spoiling the movie for others.
I’m not saying it is a bad movie. It is a solid action film with a number of impressive action set pieces. It just doesn’t live up to the hype. Simon Pegg continues to be the best part of the movie, as he’s the only one who consistently injects a sense of humor into the film, although Ving Rhames is also an asset in that regard. We needed more of their chemistry and humor over the film’s two and a half hour-long running time. Or less running time.
There are three audio commentary tracks on disc one. The first with with the star, Tom Cruise, and director, Christopher McQuarrie. Christopher McQuarrie is joined by the editor, Eddie Hamilton, in the second. Finally, the third audio commentary track is with Lorne Balfe, the composer.
Extras on disc two starts with a multi-part, 54-minute long behind-the-scenes / making of featurette. There is a four-minute montage of deleted scenes, with optional audio commentary. Foot Chase Musical Breakdown has Lorne Balfe going over a scene while talking about the score. The Ultimate Mission is a three-minute look at the how this movie is the culmination of the franchise so far. Finally there are storyboards for four scenes.
In my opinion, Mission: Impossible—Fallout doesn’t live up to the hype and needed more humor and less predictable twists. That said, the Two-Disc Blu-ray / 4K Ultra HD releases have plenty of extras, so if you liked the movie, it is worth picking up.
Video on Demand
The Movie
The Extras
The Verdict
Filed under: Video Review, Mission: Impossible—Fallout, Mission: Impossible, Tom Cruise, Alec Baldwin, Angela Bassett, Henry Cavill, Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, Lorne Balfe, Christopher McQuarrie, Eddie Hamilton, Kristoffer Joner, Vanessa Kirby, Rebecca Ferguson