Butler's Cinema Scene

Tom Cruise

“MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE: FALLOUT” My rating: B-

147 minutes| MPAA rating: PG-13

The latest “Mission: Impossible” is being hyped as possibly the greatest action film of all time.

Well, there’s no arguing that “Fallout” has some of the best conceived and executed action sequences ever, with star Tom Cruise appearing to risk life and limb to deliver the thrills audiences expect. (Of course, in this age of seamless CGI moviegoers can’t even be sure that a simple sunset is the real deal. Probably best to take the Cruise heroics with a grain of salt.)

Here’s the downside.  In his effort to deliver bigger, better stunts (he’d already set the bar impossibly high with 2015’s “Mission: Impossible: Rogue Nation”) writer/director Christopher McQuarrie has jettisoned just about every other dramatic element.

Character development?  Hah.

Coherent plotting? You need a flow chart and a PowerPoint demonstration to make sense of it all.

Emotional content?  Gimme a break.

No, this latest “M:I” is essentially a perpetual motion machine careening from one splashy sequence to the next.  The connective material — the moments when the film slows down enough to explain what’s going on or to establish who’s who —  is actually kind of irritating.  It’s like being told to eat your peas before you can have some ice cream.

Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Tom Cruise, Ving Rhames

The story this time around finds M:I facilitator Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his crew (Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames and, off and on, Rebecca Ferguson) on a quest to recover three plutonium warheads stolen from the Russkies and now up for sale to the world’s terrorists.

The main baddie is “M:I: Rogue Nation” villain Solomon Lane (Sean Harris), who even from prison has unleashed a vast conspiracy embracing an end-of-civilization ethos.

Among other things Ethan and crew must cozy up to a beautiful arms dealer known as the White Widow (Vanessa Kirby) while contending with a CIA agent (Henry Cavill) who’s been assigned to watch them for missteps. Lurking in the background are feuding spook bigwigs played by Alec  Baldwin and Angela Bassett.

There’s a furious martial arts smackdown set in a Paris men’s room, a spectacular motorcycle chase and, finally, a helicopter duel above the Hindu Kush. The latter is part of a 15-minute real-time countdown in which our guys have to dismantle a couple of atomic bombs while the clock is ticking.  Even the doubters will be biting their nails.

In the end “Fallout” is a classic roller coaster flick. You get on, do some stomach churning loop-the-loops. And when it’s all over we’re right back where we started.

| Robert W. Butler