Tom Cruise wages an Infinity War on boring movies with the new Mission: Impossible

polygon.com:

On paper, the Mission: Impossible movies are the least surprising films on Earth. Each one includes about three big death-defying stunts, a dramatic unmasking or two, and a lengthy car chase sprinkled in for good measure. The bad guys never really win, but we’ll be led to believe that someone we care about dies, though it’s rare that anyone actually does. The Impossible Missions Force — already a clandestine team that is regularly reminded that the United States government will deny they exist if they’re caught — is forced to go rogue and become even more clandestine, which usually results in a hastily assembled backup plan and the biggest stunt in the film.

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One follows this formula almost to the letter. Like the rest of the films in this long-running franchise, it’s effectively spoiler-proof. Nothing about your experience would change if I told you that its central car chase is a goofy bit of extended physical comedy where Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt is handcuffed to a thief known only as Grace (Hayley Atwell) and the two have to figure out how to drive a tiny car together. Or that its centerpiece stunt — a highly publicized death-defying leap off a motorcycle zooming off a mountain — is about as cool as it looks in the ads. And the finale is even cooler: a runaway-train sequence that’s somehow thrilling, even though runaway trains are some of the biggest action-film cliches around.

All of this is going to hit real good with action fans — especially the ones who see this film in theaters. Because the Mission: Impossible movies, like Tom Cruise (who’s now synonymous with the franchise), come from a bone-deep belief that the secret to a blockbuster that people will go see lies in