More Of The Same, But Who’s Really Complaining?

This time, it takes a while for Tom Cruise and the audience to get the hang of it. By the time Ethan Hunt is hanging from the plane for his (and civilisation’s) dear life, the scriptwriters (Christopher McQuarrie, Erik Jendresen) have finally decided to stop faffing around.

A large part of the throbbing procedure here is faffing, suave, sleek, sexy faffing, but faffing nonetheless. How many ways, and how many times, will Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt save the world before he needs to save himself?

Cruise, still insanely handsome, has begun to look rough around the edges. His performance is also redolent of fatigue, much like the Indian superstar Salman Khan, except for the fact—and this is the clincher—that Cruise still does the heart-in-the-mouth stunts himself.

The airborne peccadillo at the cliffhanging climax is incontrovertibly quixotic, much in the way that boys’ battery-operated toys are. While they play crash-my-jet on the table, kids genuinely believe it is do-or-die business.

This time Ethan tries to get from one one-seater plane to another to get some kind of a device from the villain and to also decimate the devilish party pooper (goes without saying). It is hard to believe two planes can actually indulge in such a mischievous duel in midair, or that the future of the entire civilisation depends on Nathan getting his hands on a device which AI has activated to cause untold grief to humanity.

While the world waits for doom, there is all the heart-pounding devilry.

All this is not even remotely worrisome for the audience. When we know Ethan Hunt is as invincible as Donald Trump (maybe a little more), we hardly need to wring our hands in anguished suspense. We know Hunt will be on top of every crisis, because he is Hunt and also he is played by Tom Cruise, who is, so to say, the Top Gun of American Intelligence.

What we get in the eighth film of the frenetic franchise is more of the same. But nobody is complaining. Not even about the arching ambiguities of the first half when it is almost impossible to tell who is gunning for whom… Or who is knifing whom from which side of the gambling table.

Clarity has never been a strong point of American espionage dramas, the Mission Impossible series being almost earmarked by an ambling aversion to coherence. The emotional vacuum is particularly perceptible on this occasion. There are no romantic spectators who would refer to as moist moments.

Unless we count the snatched seconds between Ethan and his soul mate Grace (Hayley Atwell), who share as much chemistry as Priyanka Chopra and her co-star in The Citadel.

Some things, we have to accept for their tradition-sanctioned inviolability; the human relations in Mission Impossible are among those, although if the truth be told, Ethan Hunt shares more emotional empathy with his IMF colleague Luther (Ving Rhames) than Grace.

Come to think of it, when was the last time we saw Tom Cruise passionately aligned with any female co-star? Here, he looks like he could do with a long break. Nobody is complaining. Certainly not the imposing Angela Bassett, who plays the American president as an antidote to Trump: sharp, instinctive, suave, smooth. She is the perfect foil to Ethan Hunt’s derring-do.

As for Hayley Atwell, her nail varnish is like Ethan Hunt’s charm. It refuses to fade under pressure. Like this series. But now the fatigue has set in. This time, the constant shooting in the snow and underwater augments the sinking feeling. This time, the series tries too hard to be the best version of itself. The effort shows.