‘Mission: Impossible - Fallout’ Reviews Rave Rousing Action Masterpiece

Mission: Impossible — Fallout, the sixth installment in the Tom Cruise-led franchise, currently stands at 97% on Rotten Tomatoes — making it the highest rated installment yet in the more than 20-year-old blockbuster series.

Fallout, from returning writer-director Christopher McQuarrie, tops the 93% earned by both McQuarrie's 2015 Rogue Nation and 2011's Brad Bird-directed Ghost Protocol.

2006's J.J. Abrams-directed Mission: Impossible III comes in fresh at 70%, followed by Brian DePalma's 1996 original at 62%. Its 2000 sequel, John Woo's Mission: Impossible 2, is the only "rotten" at 57%.

Fallout "[zings] past all caped defenders with a rousing, silly-serious, old-fashioned humdinger" with leading man Cruise putting comparable action stars of old to shame, writes Robert Abele of The Wrap, who hails its "thrillingly conceived" action sequences as giving the newest franchise entry "the semi-nostalgic feel of a Frankenheimer-esque, Friedkin-tinged European spy thriller from the genre's heyday."

Rafer Guzman of Newsday praises series newcomers Henry Cavill and Vanessa Kirby, but notes the film devotes too much time to Ethan's ex-wife, played by Michelle Monaghan, who "makes a better back story than a character."

The sixth entry is dubbed "insanely great" by Chris Hashawaty of Entertainment Weekly, who champions Fallout as "proof that this has become the rare franchise that seems to just get better, twistier, and more deliriously fun with each installment." Doling out more lavish praise, Hashawaty says filling out Cruise's IMF agent "is the closest the series has come to Skyfall or On Her Majesty's Secret Service," two prominent James Bond spy thrillers.

"Not since [Mad Max] Fury Road have such viscerally practical effects been put to better use by such deliriously impractical people," writes David Ehrlich of IndieWire, who crowns Fallout "one of the best action movies ever made." Peter Debruge of Variety calls Ethan Hunt "summer's most valuable action hero" and awards Fallout "the series' most exciting installment yet."

Keith Uhlich's write-up for Slant Magazine is the lone "rotten," writing Fallout's action scenes "are cleanly composed and easy to follow, and so abundant as to be come monotonous," criticizing its breathless pace and its characters, writing of its supporting players, "the real fallout here is that everyone's a zero."

The Hollywood Reporter's Todd McCarthy hails Fallout's "insane" action, explaining that McQuarrie "succeeds in establishing and more or less maintaining the ideal tone, one that fuses sufficient self-aware humor with the ever-more-outlandish set pieces so as to encourage the audience to enjoy them for what they are — some of the most extreme, sustained and dangerous-looking stunt-reliant action scenes ever assembled."

Starring Tom Cruise, Henry Cavill, Rebecca Ferguson, Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, Sean Harris, Vanessa Kirby, Michelle Monaghan, Alec Baldwin, and Angela Bassett, Mission: Impossible — Fallout opens July 27.