‘Mission: Impossible — Fallout’ and the Bliss of the Hyper-Human Tom Cruise

There is a whole lot of everything in the “Mission: Impossible — Fallout,” an entertainment machine par excellence that skitters around the world and has something to do with nuclear bombs, mysterious threats and dangerous beauties. Mostly, it has to do with that hyper-human Tom Cruise, who runs, drives, dives, shoots, flies, falls and repeatedly teeters on the edge of disaster, clinging to one after another cliffhanger. As usual, he works hard for our dollars and eyeballs in a movie that spins the oldies (a blonde with a knife in her garter) while pushing to greater spectacle-cinema extremes.

Once again, Cruise plays Ethan Hunt, who leads a crypto government unit called Impossible Missions Force that is as preposterous, politically dubious and near-magical as it was in the mid-1960s when the TV show first hit, latex masks and all. More than a half-century later, this impossible team’s leader is still receiving operational details via a self-destructing recording (should he choose to accept) and leaping unto the breach with his second bananas. Their numbers have shrunk over time, so now it is a lonely guys’ club that includes the gruff Luther (Ving Rhames), who is some kind of tech guy, and the rabbity Benji (Simon Pegg), another tech guy with more, faster patter.

This is the sixth installment in this long-running series, and while I have seen all the movies at least once, the only entry that left a lasting visual imprint on me is the 1996 kickoff directed by Brian De Palma. That one of course features the series-defining image of Cruise suspended just inches above the floor. Since then, directors have come and gone, but only the latest, Christopher McQuarrie, has returned for repeat duty. Cruise’s affable, relaxed performance here suggests why. McQuarrie understands that the looser his star, often the looser (and better) the performance. “Fallout” has plenty of serious interludes, but its overall tone is borderline breezy, with bullets.

The movie is propelled by action scenes that transmit a little something about the characters while nudging the story forward, much like the song-and-dance numbers in a musical. Fairly early, Ethan meets a slinky entrepreneur-operative called the White Widow (the charismatic Vanessa Kirby, who played Princess Margaret in the Netflix series “The Crown”). She is the one with the shiv in her garter. Before she slides it out, Ethan and an unwelcome new partner, Walker (a fine Henry Cavill), ambush a villain (Liang Yang) in a men’s bathroom. The setting and Cavill’s pornstache and strapping masculinity invest the scene with titillating possibility: Is this an operation or a hookup?

It is both, in a way, but like an Astaire and Rogers number it is simply flirty. Much of the fight involves the display of beautiful male bodies, which is punctuated by Ethan’s obvious exasperation having to partner with the younger, taller, bigger Walker. But McQuarrie also plays with the location using some winking staging in a men’s stall that introduces levity amid the blows. He is teasing us with the location — we are the ones being flirted with — and by extension rumors about Cruise’s sexuality. The setup does not fully work and could be read as an example of gay panic rather than a swat at it. But it shrewdly frames Cruise as being as self-aware as he is famously controlling.

Amid rapidly shifting tones — from slapstick light to grimly dire — the bathroom is soon demolished and its white surfaces predictably redecorated with a bold red accent. The fighting throughout the scene is meaty, intimate and increasingly, intensely visceral as the men grapple and grunt while they slam to the ground and against, and through, walls. (The stunt coordinator is Wade Eastwood.) The struggling can be unnerving; you wince at some of the more intense wallops and the fatal stakes they portend. Of course it is also satisfying because each smackdown is followed by a resurrection, a shaky rise from the floor and a counterattack that telegraphs resolve, superiority and victory.

The action sequences become more intricate, large-scale and spectacular as Ethan chases down the enemy across assorted striking locales by foot, car, motorcycle and helicopter. One of Cruise’s signatures as a star is that he does his own stunts, whether he’s underwater or airborne. These intense physical displays have long served as his most persuasive markers of authenticity; his toothy smile and persona may be contrived, but the motorcycle he races on helmetless and the wind that pummels him during a free-fall are anxiously real. His physicality is crucial to the success of the “Mission: Impossible” series, critical to the movies’ kick.

There is real pleasure in the images of Cruise, tense yet nimble, zigzagging through Paris on a motorcycle or sliding a car across pavement. In the past there is also been something discomforting about the apparent risks he has taken, which are inevitably folded into the publicity campaigns and the entertainment coverage. There is a strange, quasi-religious aspect to these exhibitions of near-sacrifice, one that turns Cruise — he almost died (again) for us — into a would-be martyr, though one who is obviously safe (alive!) and comfortably cosseted. Even the trajectory of this movie’s fights, from cavernous dark to Valhalla-like bright heights, suggests an emergent divinity.

This makes Cruise’s sagging eyes and visible creases an interesting, complicating factor for this decadeslong series. Cruise is now 56, and while obviously fitter than most mortals, he looks closer to his age than ever. Age is the one thing that he cannot control, which works for the character, making Ethan a touch more vulnerable. The movie draws attention to Ethan’s age, sometimes for laughs, though never truly at Cruise’s expense.

The harder laughs are reserved for Cavill, who’s best known for playing Superman and is close to the age that Cruise was when the first “Mission: Impossible” opened. But Cavill will never be the star of this show, which Cruise reminds you as he plays God while gradually making acquaintance with his human self.

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‘Mission: Impossible — Fallout’

Rated PG-13 for violence, including gun play and dangerous driving, diving, running, leaping, flying. Running time: 2 hours 27 minutes.