Mission: Impossible - Fallout

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - FALLOUT

** SPOILERS **

"Hope is not a strategy," August Walker (Henry Cavill) says to Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise). Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) quips back, "You must be new." Indeed, if you think about it, we never really see Ethan Hunt eat or drink, so he must be fueled purely by hope as he does impossible things to save the world.

In the relentlessly entertaining Mission: Impossible - Fallout (the 6th Mission in 22 years), Ethan is pushed to his absolute limits as he and the IMF, consisting of the hilarious Benji (Simon Pegg) and the ever-loyal Luther (Ving Rhames) - race around the world to stop two nuclear weapons from killing millions of innocent people. The genius of Fallout, directed once more by Christopher McQuarrie, is in how all of the dangers the IMF has ever faced has been balled up into the personal guilt of Ethan Hunt. He's responsible for all of us, and he knows it. "I'll figure it out!" is Ethan's response every time the IMF asks him what to do, though by then, Ethan has already taken off to perform some type of aerobatic insanity. Bless him, Ethan will go to absolutely any lengths to save us, because that's simply what Ethan Hunt does.

The last three Missions have been a more tightly-woven narrative than the original trilogy from 1996-2006. 2011's Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol introduced the Syndicate, a rogue nation of former government operatives led by an anarchist named Solomon Lane (Sean Harris). Ethan and the IMF captured Lane in Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation, but two years later, the remnants of the Syndicate have reorganized into a new terrorist network called the Apostles. They want their old leader back and they'll detonate three nukes to get him. Of course, the IMF mobilizes to stop them, this time led by Secretary Hunley (Alec Baldwin). Hunley was the IMF's greatest critic until he saw Ethan in action in Rogue Nation; like anyone who gets to see what Ethan Hunt can do, Hunley was instantly converted. Indeed, Hunley delivered an astonishing pro-Ethan speech in Rogue Nation where he called Mr. Hunt "the living manifestation of destiny." Now's he's Team Ethan all the way. However, the IMF always has to be disavowed in some way. New CIA head Angela Bassett thinks the IMF are a bunch of "grown men in Halloween masks" and sends her own man to oversee Ethan, August Walker. If Walker could twirl his infamous mustache, he would have.

The action in Fallout is typical for Mission: Impossible, which is to say it's deliriously breathtaking. With the 56-year-old Cruise once more performing the majority of his own stunts, Ethan soars higher and takes more risks than ever. Ethan and Walker HALO jump 25,000 feet into Paris just to crash a party where the mysterious Apostle leader named "John Lark" is set to meet a broker called the White Widow (the fetching Vanessa Kirby). If you think about it, was the HALO jump even necessary? It's Paris, not North Korea - there are a dozen safer ways to enter the City of Lights. Nevertheless, that sets the stage for a brutal men's room brawl and an incredible motorcycle and car chase sequence all over Paris as Ethan evades the police after capturing Solomon Lane yet again. Ethan then parkours and runs across the rooftops of London chasing after Walker, who is revealed to be the real John Lark, before it all culminates in an absolutely spectacular helicopter chase that concludes with a fight on a Kashmir mountaintop where Ethan is literally dangling off the mountain by his fingertips.

For her part, Kirby delivers a speech about her mother Max, which means she must be the daughter of the original broker of information Ethan encountered in his first Mission in 1996. And the White Widow is powerfully attracted to Ethan, so like mother, like daughter. Also attracted to Ethan is MI-6 agent Ilsa Faust, who was Ethan's partner and foil in Rogue Nation. Ilsa joins the IMF at last, though not after betraying Ethan again, which he naturally forgives because he knows she has "reasons." That's the spy game for you. The best callback of all, however, is the return of Ethan's wife Julia (Michelle Monaghan), who has been on the run for her own safety since Mission: Impossible III. She's a doctor without borders now, married to Wes Bentley of all people, but when Ethan comes back into her life once again, she knows it's because the world is at stake. She gets him. "I like her," Ilsa realizes, and we agree. Even while four action set pieces are going on at once, George Lucas-style, in one of the best roller coaster third acts ever in an action movie, we're stunned at the emotional punch Julia and Ethan's reunion packs.

Poor Ethan apologizes eight times in Fallout: once to a French police woman who finds herself in the wrong place in the wrong time, once to Alec Baldwin, twice when he runs into a funeral in a cathedral while being chased by the Apostles, and four times to Julia herself. But as Julia notes, Ethan has nothing to be sorry for. Ethan's guilt over the way his adventures have upended his wife's life is expunged and finally, he's free of the secret torment he harbors - the same torment Solomon Lane uses against him in his nightmares. Of course, Ethan Hunt can't ever stop trying to save the world, and the world desperately needs him. But by the end, with Ilsa and the IMF, his team - no, his friends - rallied around him in the hospital after he put it all on the line once more, we regard Ethan with the same admiration that they do. Rest up, Mr. Hunt, and get back out there. The world needs you in Mission: Impossible 7.

The Equalizer 2

THE EQUALIZER 2

** SPOILERS **

The Equalizer 2 plays right into that time-honored stage trope: if you say that there's a storm coming in Act 1, then that storm better come in like a motherfucker and you fight all the bad guys in it in Act III. Director Antoine Fuqua's The Equalizer 2 resists calling itself the logical title of The Sequelizer; nonetheless, this is Denzel Washington's first-ever sequel in his illustrious career. Denzel returns as Robert McCall, a Boston native and former CIA operative with a certain set of skills and a hole in his lonely soul he can only fill by putting the hurt on very bad people. As established in the previous film, McCall is a man who believes in pure justice and will apply his certain set of skills on behalf of the unfortunate souls who cross his path and need his help. He's intelligent, unrelenting, and unstoppable. If you need the Equalizer, you can reach him via your Lyft app.

In the years since he massacred the entire Russian mafia to help a teenage prostitute (Chloe Grace Moretz) get her life on track, McCall has left his job as a beloved manager at Home Depot. His vigilante activities require him to set his own hours, plus he needs to be amongst the people to figure out who is worthy of his incredible talent for murder. Like old man Logan, McCall entered the livery business; the many scenes of him scooting all over Boston and taxiing people to and fro are the most entertaining scenes in the movie. For all of the driving around, however, The Equalizer 2 is slow to get where it ultimately wants to go. The many, many scenes of Bob behind the wheel or trying to help out his neighbors, who had their apartment building and garden vandalized, are intermittently interspersed with, you know, the actual plot of the movie.

Bob is eventually pulled into a quest for revenge when his best friend and former CIA overseer Melissa Leo is murdered in Brussels. All signs point to Pedro Pascal, Bob's former teammate when they were running black ops together for the agency and sure enough, Pascal is the bad guy. There was never any doubt about this. The way McCall calls him out is a clever reversal of the villain threatening the hero's family; Bob drops by with all smiles and gets Pascal's wife and kids to warm up to him. They're blissfully unaware they're human shields while McCall plays Pascal right into his trap. After threatening Pascal and his mercenary buddies lives by telling them flat out he's going to murder them, McCall goes and does exactly that.

The original Equalizer climaxed with an extended shootout of McCall against the Russian mafia at Home Depot. Once more, McCall takes on his enemies on his home turf: he booby traps his seaside hometown of Marshfield, MA Home Alone-style and decimates Pascal's men in the middle of a typhoon. McCall effortlessly navigates his quaint New England hamlet completely unbothered by the relentless rain and wind, delivering methodical and brutal vengeance as the Right Hand of God. It's satisfying watching Denzel annihilate bad people, yet at the same time, he is never truly challenged, rarely injured, and he's not once in any actual danger. By staging the climactic battle in the midst of Mother Nature's wrath, The Equalizer 2 flat out announces that Bob McCall is the real force of nature.

Overall a drab affair, The Equalizer 2 takes quite a long while to shift into gear, yet it's comforting to ride along with Bob McCall. Even though he's a mass murderer, he is a righteous one and deep down we know he is the good guy. His murders are actually much lower key this time around; compared to the first movie, McCall's body count is seriously reduced. With no Moretz as his youthful foil, McCall is paired up with a troubled young artist named Miles (Ashton Sanders) whom he saves from becoming a gangbanger and tries to teach some life lessons to, but Miles doesn't exactly win the audience over. The question now is whether Denzel will actually set another precedent and make another Sequelizer. Maybe he will if we leave him a five-star rating.

Ant-Man and the Wasp

ANT-MAN AND THE WASP

** SPOILERS **

There's a moment early in director Peyton Reed's Ant-Man and the Wasp that subtly epitomizes why Marvel Studios superhero films work so well. Hope Van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly) gets double-crossed by a criminal dealer in exotic technology played by Walton Goggins. As his goons set upon her, she transforms into the microscopic but wondrous Wasp and goes to town on the bad guys. Naturally, they open fire while she takes refuge in a chandelier. As she waits for the coast to clear, Hope is breathing heavily - being a superhero and fighting baddies is hard, it takes effort. And even though she has the superpowers to shrink and fly with mechanical wasp wings, Hope is human through and through.

The human moments are the highlight of Ant-Man and the Wasp, which continues the story of Scott Lang (Paul Rudd, as affable as ever), the smallest (not officially an) Avenger. The last time we saw Ant-Man, he was in a maximum security prison called the Raft after he was captured for fighting alongside Team Cap in Captain America: Civil War. In the two years since, Scott copped a plea bargain for violating the Sokovia Accords by revealing that his Ant-Man tech came from super scientist Hank Pym (Michael Douglas). As a result of his shrinking technology being unregistered with the UN, Hank and Hope are now fugitives on the run and are not at all happy with Scott. For his part, Scott is under house arrest and, in a spin on a classic cop movie trope, he's only got a few days left until retirement his sentence is up and he's a free man. But Scott had the best of reasons to give up the Pyms: he did it to be with his adoring 10-year-old daughter Cassie (Abbie Ryder Fortson), the apple of his eye and the best pre-teen in the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe. 

Family is what Ant-Man and the Wasp is all about, and the plot really thickens when Janet Van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer, a bit underutilized), the original Wasp who was lost for 30 years in the other-dimensional Quantum Realm, somehow mind-melds with Scott, who was briefly lost in the Quantum Realm in the first Ant-Man movie. (This is called a Quantum Entanglement but, as Scott wryly notes, the Pyms put the word "Quantum" in front of most of their super-sciencey words.) Since the coordinates to find Janet are in Scott's head, Hank and Hope kidnap Scott and launch a wacky series of shrinky-dink adventures in their quest to find Janet and bring her back home. Hank has constructed a Quantum Tunnel is his secret shrinking lab, and the film overdoses on jokes about how the Pyms can shrink and enlarge just about anything, especially the Hot Wheels cars they drive on several gonzo chases all over San Francisco. 

All of the bad guys, including the mysterious Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), want that shrinking lab, and practically all of the characters play an extended game of hot potato with that lab. Unfortunately, after super villains like Vulture (Michael Keaton), Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan), and Thanos (Michael Josh Brolin), Ghost, a desperate victim of Hank Pym's super science mistakes who can phase through solid matter but is in danger of disappearing into the Quantum Realm entirely, is a bit of a letdown despite John-Kamen's best efforts to make her poignant.

In the meantime, just about everyone from the first Ant-Man comes back for the sequel, including Scott's ex-con cohorts-turned-business partners led by the hilariously motormouthed Luis (Michael Pena). Despite his house arrest and the film's ticking clock trope of him needing to be back home periodically to throw the Feds off his scent, the fact that Scott can be in business with a bunch of ex-cons in a security company literally called X-Con shows that he somehow struck the most lenient plea bargain deal in the short history of the Sokovia Accords. Also back are Judy Greer as Scott's ex-wife and Bobby Cannavale as her cop husband; this time, they amusingly love Scott and can't get enough group hugs. But then, it's incredibly hard not to like and want to hug Scott Lang. 

The first Ant-Man was a tidy little (but honestly, probably superior) Marvel superhero movie disguised as a heist film. Ant-Man and the Wasp is more sprawling and ambitious, but considerably less focused. This can be attributed to the film being the product of no less than five screenwriters, including Paul Rudd, who reportedly emphasized Scott's family ties. Meanwhile, Lilly is a firecracker as the Wasp; one senses she has been waiting her whole life to be a superhero (just like Hope) and she makes the most of finally getting to wear a supersuit and sock bad guys. Hope and Scott continue to have chemistry that the film doesn't quite go all the way with, perhaps realizing that this prequel film must eventually synch up with the tragic events of Avengers: Infinity War. Thanos' finger snap does factor into the film, and most of the characters fade to dust in the end - a rather ballsy denoument after a pleasingly lighthearted and fun adventure yarn. But before half the universe dies, Ant-Man and the Wasp is a good time Marvel palate cleanser - which, all things considered, is no small feat.