'Mission: Impossible – Fallout' hailed as one of the 'best action movies ever made'

One reviewer has called Mission: Impossible – Fallout one of the ‘best action movies ever made’.

And while Tom Cruise has been raising the bar since the first movie 1996, it appears that the franchise still has legs some five movies later.

Christopher McQuarrie has returned to helm this sixth instalment, after also directing its predecessor Rogue Nation.

It finds Sean Harris’s Solomon Lane at large once again after an IMF mission goes south, and Cruise’s Ethan Hunt tasked with delivering the planet from a global catastrophe.

And though it sounds impossibly ambitious, it sounds like they’ve pulled it off.

“It delivers,” reckons Entertainment Weekly. “More than that, it’s become the rare franchise that seems to just get better, twistier, and more deliriously fun with each instalment.”

Adds The Hollywood Reporter: “The action here represents the mainstream cinema’s version of extreme sports and these guys have staked their claim at the summit.”

Mashable reckons: “All of their derring-do is choreographed, shot, and acted in a way that looks real, in a way that puts most of this summer’s other action-adventure blockbusters to shame.”

Vanity Fair says: “McQuarrie’s film is the most fun you’re likely to have at the movies this season, a riot mounted with precision, a melee in which every punch and crunch is considered.”

In a full five-out-of-five notice, The Daily Telegraph opines: “OK, McQuarrie may not have De Palma’s sweat-drop precision, John Woo’s craziness or the impish wit of Brad Bird, but his mastery of logistics here is easily sufficient to make it the blockbuster of the summer.”

The Daily Beast calls it ‘the most spectacular action film in years’, adding: “Determined to perpetually raise the bar for both the series and himself, Cruise again proves, with his latest, that both of those seemingly impossible feats is possible.”

OK, the celebration is not quite universal (though pretty much).

In a muted two-out-of-four review, Slant magazine criticised the general aggrandisement of Cruise.

“It misses no opportunity to prop up Cruise’s indomitable earthly ego while his character runs, jumps, falls, fist-fights, sky-dives, and clambers up rope and cliff in service of… what exactly?” it writes.

And The Guardian’s review points out a few shortcomings too, but largely comes out on the side of Team Cruise.

“Over two-and-a-half hours, you get a lot of deafening bangs for your buck, and the tourist location stunts are impressive – but there isn’t as much humour in the dialogue as before. In fact, when Ethan Hunt’s not kicking ass he’s not joking – but rather tearing up, remembering his lost love.

“And Tom does a couple of very ripe waking-up-from-a-nightmare bits of acting. But crashes and petrolhead spills are what this franchise is reasonably expected to deliver. And this is what it cheerfully does.”

Also starring Henry Cavill, Rebecca Ferguson, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Angela Bassett and Alec Baldwin, it’s out across the UK on July 25.

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