The new thread about rogue agent network The Syndicate that had been introduced in Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol (2011) and expanded in Mission: Impossible: Rogue Nation (2015) was picked up again for the sixth film in the series, again written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie. Amazingly, six films in, there was absolutely no sign of the franchise flagging as Fallout – despite its potentially unwieldy 147-minute running time – proves to be the film that bests Ghost Protocol for EOFFTV’s choice as the best in the series.

Fallout features easily the best arrangement, by Lorne Balfe, of Lalo Schifrin’s irresistible theme tune so far and it’s used to underscore an absolute belter of a title sequence. After that we get a cracking opening shot of Hunt and Julia taking their marriage vows as a nuclear bomb detonates behind then. It’s all a dream of course, one of several that Hunt suffers throughout the film as his guilt over Julia finally surfaces. The main plot picks up two years after the events of Rogue Nation and the remnants of The Syndicate, the organisation set up by rogue MI6 gent Solomon Lane (Sean Harris), have regrouped as The Apostles. They seem to be working in cahoots with mysterious anarchist John Lark whose real identity has eluded intelligence agencies around the world. Hunt is sent to retrieve three stolen plutonium cores before The Apostles can get their hands on them but the mission fails when Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames) is injured and Hunt pauses to help him, allowing arms dealer Alanna Mitsopolis (aka the White Widow) (Vanessa Kirby) to capture the plutonium. The team captures nuclear weapons expert Nils Delbruuk (Kristoffer Joner) and dupes him into believing that Rome, Mecca and Jerusalem have been destroyed by nuclear weapons (the masks are back – Dunn disguises himself as American newscasters Wolf Blitzer) and he unwittingly unlocks a phone that could lead the IMF to Lark. CIA Director Erika Sloane (Angela Bassett) assigns Special Activities Division operative August Walker (Henry Cavill) to work with Hunt, they run into former MI6 agent Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) who again interferes with their mission, are blackmailed into rescuing Lane from a convoy travelling across Paris and the team realises that there’s  traitor in their midst. It all climaxes in Kashmir where The Apostles are planning to nuke the Siachen Glacier, contaminating the water supply of India, Pakistan, and China. As Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg), Stickell, Faust and Hunt’s ex-wife Julia (Michelle Monaghan) who is in the region working at a medical mission, try to defuse the bombs, Hunt pursues the unmasked traitor in an exhilarating helicopter chase.

If you thought – and you really should have – that the previous Mission: Impossible films tended towards the repetitive (how many times can one man be abandoned by the agency he works for before he decides that enough is enough and goes off to do something more rewarding) there’s nothing in Fallout that will, if you’ll forgive me, disavow you of that belief. There’s business with helicopters, motorcycles, a bad guy who wants to destroy the world with nuclear weapons, duplicitous double-crossers and all the usual shenanigans. But it’s put together with such extraordinary skill that you’ll be swept along by the outrageous plot just as much as you were in the earlier films.

By now you know better than to turn to a Mission: Impossible film in search of originality, insight or depth. You pay your money to be wowed by whatever insane action scenes they come up with this time and not worry about the flimsy plot which, as always, is just there to fill in those pesky bits in between the set-pieces anyway. There are some funny moments thanks to the inter-departmental in-fighting between the IMF and the CIA (Soane dismisses the IMF as “a bunch of grown men in rubber masks playing trick or treat”) but we’re here for the death-defying stuff, not the rib-ticklers.

And Fallout certainly doesn‘t disappoint – it’s worth price of admission for the spectacular helicopter chase at the climax with Cruise once again doing his own stunts and flying his own helicopter. For all its high tech gadgetry, the Mission: Impossible franchise is pleasingly old fashioned in many ways, favouring practical stunts and effects over CGI and Fallout isn‘t short of bruisingly physical action scenes. Cruise even suffered for his art when his desire to perform his own stunts led to real injury. During his mad dash across the rooftops of London (a spectacular chase that takes in a funeral, Hunt haring around St Paul’s Cathedral’s Whispering gallery, through offices, across the South Bank and up onto the Tate Gallery’s chimney) he broke his ankle when he mistimed a jump between two buildings, an agonising moment retained in the film. “What the hell is he doing?” someone asks of Hunt in Fallout – it might well be the mantra for the entire series.

Elsewhere, the three-way punch up in the toilets of a Parisian nightclub is as brutal as any you’ll see in a Hollywood action film and the car/bike chase tops anything so far seen in the series. We’ve seen Tom Cruise on a motorbike many times before but somehow it never fails to be hugely exciting. One assumes that some CGI must have been needed here but it’s fairly seamless. McQuarrie – and/or his second unit director Wade Eastwood – is/are savvy enough to direct the action scenes in such a way that we always know exactly where everyone is in relation to each other and their surroundings (not always a given in these things) and they play fair with the laws of physics and geography.

Michelle Monahan returns for a more substantial turn than she had in her little cameo at the end of Ghost Protocol, it wouldn‘t be a Mission: Impossible film without the marvellous Ving Rhames, Rebecca Ferguson again plays Ilsa Faust with a mix of enigma and sex appeal (though by the end she’s definitely on the IMF’s side, not more amoral ambiguity), Henry Cavill looks at first like he might be being set up as a potential replacement for Cruise (he was 55 at the time the film was shot and there must surely only be a limited number of these things he’s still got in him) Simon Pegg is as likeable as ever as the increasingly important Dunn. There was no room this time for Jeremy Renner’s William Brandt sadly, who had more or less taken a desk job in the last film anyway, Sean Harris doesn’t get as much to do this time round (he spends much of the film trussed up like a beardy Hannibal lector) but he’s still marvellously sinister rand Vanessa Kirby makes an interesting new addition to the series as the daughter of arms dealer Max from the first film.

By now, the Mission: Impossible films were a well-oiled machine, expertly tooled, beautifully styled and ruthlessly efficient. There’s never any doubt that Hunt will triumph – the plotting is as old fashioned as the production – but McQuarrie makes sure that the odds are very much stacked against him. It’s impossible to watch Fallout without a big dopey grin on your face – it’s smart enough not to patronise you, but not so smart that it ties itself in unnecessary narrative knots. It rattles along at breakneck speed, barely pausing for breath.

Two more instalments, both unsubtitled as of July 2021, were greenlit in 2019 to be shot, with McQuarrie at the helm again, back-to back for release in 2021 and 2022 but the COVID-19 pandemic put paid to that. The films will now be released in 2022 and 2023 and they’ll be hard pressed to top the glorious insanity of Fallout. Though one suspects that somehow, they might do just that.