Mission: Impossible Fallout Review: 5 Reasons You Must See It

5. It's Self Aware, But Not Scared To Be Serious

The film is self-aware, but thankfully not in a meta, poking-fun-at-itself way. It’s less about making you laugh at how everything is an excuse to let Tom Cruise hang from a helicopter, but more an invitation to lose yourself in the madness of everything going on. It can still be a funny movie when it wants to be, but it isn’t insecure about its silliness.

That’s not just me projecting onto the film either, but actually the crux of the rivalry between the IMF and the clinical CIA in the story. Multiple times the IMF agents are ridiculed for being “little boys playing dress up” and avoiding the simple, often most brutal solution - and that assessment is absolutely spot on. They get a kick out of the theatricality and so does the audience, but the movie makes it clear that’s not a bad thing. For a film which could easily be ridiculed as turn-your-brain-off fun, it constantly makes sure you’re paying attention, and knows exactly what it’s doing.

Although the story is mainly an excuse to string together some truly bombastic set-pieces, it does have a surprising amount of character depth and heart to it. This is partly why the more ridiculous sequences work so well; the characters never undermine what’s happening, they play it straight and you buy into their plight. Likewise, this is probably the deepest any movie in the series has delved into Ethan Hunt’s psyche. It’s not a lot, but it surprisingly humanises a man who spends most of his time doing HALO jumps for no reason.