Can Only Go Up From Here

Rating: 4/10 (24 January 2017)

Not all Mission Impossibles are created equal and this one is definitely at or towards the bottom.
Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is in a desperate pursuit of a super villain and his goons known as The Syndicate (I know, how clever). He is aided (for reasons unknown initially) by a woman named Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) in his attempts to bring down The Syndicate.
Allow me to digress for a minute. When did it become the preferred fighting style and the go to move for women to elaborately, acrobatically and lithely jump while simultaneously wrapping their legs around an assailants arm, or preferably neck, in order to then either A.) break his neck, B.) strike him in a vulnerable area or C.) use a sharp object to kill him? I've seen plenty of MMA and if this was a viable and effective move as the movies would have me believe then surely ONE of the many mixed martial artists would have employed this coda. I've never seen Rhonda Rousey use the jump- scissor-kick submission move once. Aaah, but with the aid of film editing and jump cuts we see countless men helpless to defend themselves against this awesome finishing move. It is the great equalizer for the 120 pound female and Ms. Faust had three opportunities to use it.
OK, back to my review. Where was I? Oh, yes... Ethan does all this badass stuff, gets help from a superbad chick and you know the rest.
The story was simply stale and after a while you get a little bored with the one-up death defying stunt. Just to show how lame this episode was the CIA director, played by Alec Baldwin, said that he would have to activate the Special Activities Division. As I do with all government organizations I quickly reduced it to its acronym and had to laugh. I think that summed up this entire movie: SAD.