M:I-Fallout gets some love from critics

A clapperboard from Mission: Impossible-Fallout

Mission: Impossible-Fallout is getting some positive reviews two weeks ahead of its release.

The sixth M:I film starring Tom Cruise and released by Paramount is due out the last weekend of this month.

It was a hectic production, which included Cruise breaking his ankle during a stunt. But the early reviews are mostly complimentary.

Here are some non-spoiler excerpts:

ROBERT ABELE, THE WRAP: “In the shootout phase of international action franchise competition, then, “Mission: Impossible — Fallout” has decidedly zinged one past all caped defenders with a rousing, silly-serious, old-fashioned humdinger that could make a whole audience of veteran action stars nod slowly, wide-eyed, and say, “I remember those days, but I never worked that hard.”

RAFER GUZMAN, NEWSDAY: “Yet here is Cruise, 56, performing some of the most impressive feats of derring-do ever captured on screen….Writer-director Christopher McQuarrie, on his second “M:I” film, keeps this elaborate machine purring like a luxury sedan with only the occasional misfire. The plot gets so tangled in mental chess and double deceits that the characters often sound like internet conspiracy theorists (“Don’t you see? This is the trap!”).”

TODD MCCARTHY, THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER: “The plot may be as indecipherable as The Big Sleep, but the action is insane in this sixth installment of Mission: Impossible. Loaded with extended sequences that show Tom Cruise doing what look like real — and really dangerous — stunts all over central Paris and London…writer-director Christopher McQuarrie’s second outing on the series tops what he did with Cruise three years ago with Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation.”

PETER DEBRUGE, VARIETY: “(Tom Cruise character Ethan) Hunt himself has acquired a gravitas along the way that distinguishes the series from its most obvious inspiration, the James Bond movies of the 1960s, back when Sean Connery was that franchise’s first and only star. Now playing to an audience who’s forgotten (if it ever realized) that these films were inspired by a knockoff TV series from the same era, “Mission: Impossible — Fallout” isn’t just another stunt-driven save-the-world bonanza.”

KEITH UHLICH, SLANT MAGAZINE: ” It would help if there was a single character worth caring about…The real fallout here is that everyone’s a zero.”