Over the top action, mediocre story Having recently watched two action movies in theater this summer - Jurassic World, and Skyscraper, I went into this movie expecting it to be clearly better than the other two. I came out a bit underwhelmed to be honest. What bothered me most is how hard they try to explain every single thing that happens in the movie. Ethan's character's motive is explained by so many people at different times and its just the same old cliche boring and patriotic speech (he's out there to serve the country, save the world and he can't look away when something goes wrong yada yada). They do the same with the bad guy's motives too. When I think of Mission Impossible, I think of it as an American Bond movie but it simply lacks any sophistication. Yes, MI is also typically big on action and stunts and can be quite in your face, but is it really necessary to dumb it down so much? Part of what makes movies great is to keep people thinking. Here, it's pretty clear - someone is going to blow stuff up. But they still want to spell it out and make it clear incase you couldn't guess that Tom Cruise was going to jump on that Helicopter.
Plot is pretty mediocre and unbelievable - the bad guys already have hold of the small pox virus that can potentially infect close to 3 billion people in the region (in Asia), yet they are after a nuclear device (which would cost far less damage). And they want the nuclear device not to kill people but incinerate a glacier in Himalayas that would cut off water supply to the said billions of people, hence starving them. Okay, not very practical but whatever, it's a movie.
Apart from that, the action sequences are pretty great, what you expect from MI. The scenes in Himalayas are visually stunning. 7/10