Mission: Impossible - Cold War

Mission: Impossible - Cold War is the seventh film in the Mission: Impossible series, and a sequel to Mission: Impossible - Fallout.

Plot
Ethan Hunt and his allies, new and old, embark around the globe on new missions against the Apostles, especially when Solomon Lane escapes again from MI6 custody. But Hunt's loyalties are tested further than ever before when a new criminal organization surfaces against the Apostles, and even further when new IMF agents Katie and Martin Shrike reveal their own troubling agenda, against both the Apostles and the government. To prevent a worldwide catastrophe, Hunt and his team are forced into an uneasy alliance with his old enemy Max.

Plot
Three years after the Battle of Kashmir, the Apostles compromise the security of a prison in London holding their leader, Solomon Lane, later forcing the corrections officers to transfer him to another prison. However, the Apostles attack the convoy transporting Lane, successfully breaking him out; former MI6 chief Atlee and arms dealer Max also escape in the confusion. Meanwhile, IMF agents Ethan Hunt, Jane Carter, Benji Dunn and Luther Stickell infiltrate the White House in an attempt to thwart a terrorist attack on it, apparently by members of the Apostles. Hunt rescues his former brother-in-law, Rick Meade, as well as rookie IMF agents Katie and Martin Shrike, but CIA Director Erica Sloane is injured. At an IMF debriefing in Langley, IMF Secretary William Brandt reveals Lane's escape to Hunt's team, now including Rick and the Shrikes, and that Sloane was interrogated and tortured for a list of undercover CIA agents across the globe. They are also informed that the Apostles have broken Norwegian nuclear weapons expert Nils Delbruuk out of a prison in Germany.

Two months later, Sloane recovers from her injuries, but faces scrutiny from the rest of the US government. Brandt informs Sloane that although the IMF have prevented the Apostles from carrying out various attacks, said attacks have covered the Apostles' attempt to decrypt the stolen hard drive. Brandt advises her to resign to avoid further scrutiny. Shortly afterwards, she receives a taunting computer message and the CIA's main headquarters is bombed.

The team travels to Prague, where a CIA Special Activities Division team is being lured into a trap. With the help of Hunt's mask technology and MI6 agents Ilsa Faust and Alanna Mitsopolis, they manage to thwart the attack and retrieve the stolen hard drive and information about the responsible party. They flee to an IMF safehouse in Paris, where Faust and Dunn inform them that the attackers are actually members of the Cold Warriors, a criminal group created by Atlee and Max to rival the Apostles, out of Atlee's indirect responsibility for their creation (by having started the Syndicate, which later became the Apostles, without his Prime Minister's permission years earlier). They learn that Delbruuk is in the US.

They return to Langley and find that Delbruuk has multiple targets across the country. Sloane arrives with another CIA team to detain everyone, having regained her distrust of the IMF after a public inquiry into her handling of the stolen hard drive, but the Shrikes kill them and attack Sloane; revealing that they hired the Cold Warriors to free Lane, Atlee and Max and attack the White House and the CIA, as part of their plan to humiliate and kill Sloane, who Katie holds responsible for the death of her father, late IMF Secretary Alan Hunley, despite her likewise resentment of Hunley for wrongly attempting to capture Hunt. They capture Hunt's ex-wife, Julia, who is in Paris on another matter, and attempt to blackmail Hunt, but he convinces them to spare Sloane and Julia by revealing Atlee's role in Hunley's death, thus persuading them to turn against the Cold Warriors. Max betrays the Cold Warriors and joins Hunt's team upon discovering Alanna, informing them that the Apostles have discovered the Shrikes' agenda and, having used Delbruuk to build multiple nuclear weapons, now plan on destroying every CIA headquarters in the entire US and framing the Cold Warriors for it. The resulting explosions will kill most of all life in the US, destabilize the world's security and allow them to carry out a worldwide wave of attacks, as another plan to destroy the current world order.

Arriving in Washington, the team captures a member of the Apostles and forces him to reveal the location of the detonator for the nuclear weapons in Washington, set to detonate all the weapons during the Fourth of July celebrations, and then expose John Lark's manifesto, to further humiliate the government and reinforce the chaos. Hunt and Dunn find Lane escaping from Washington with the already-activated detonator and pursue him by car. The Cold Warriors open fire on the celebrations to kill the members of the Apostles, but the team, with the help of Stickell, use military drones and the night's firework explosions to kill the Cold Warriors and damage a helicopter piloted by Lane, and Faust and the Shrikes kill Atlee. Hunt reaches a crane and manages to subdue Lane, jump into the helicopter during its uncontrollable descent, deactivate the detonator and escape as the helicopter crashes into the Potomac River, killing Lane.

In the aftermath, the bombs are safely defused. Ethan awakens in a hospital with his entire team, Brandt and Julia by his side. Sloane resigns and the Shrikes attempt to follow suit, thanking Ethan for helping them realize their mistakes, but Hunley arrives alive and well, revealing that he was simply in a coma following his injury, and reconciles with Katie; Rick likewise reunites with Julia. Brandt promptly steps down from his post, becoming Field Operations Director again, but reveals to Hunley that the Apostles and Cold Warriors are still at large; the team vows to keep going on their missions.

Cast

 * Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt
 * Saoirse Ronan as Katie Shrike (nee Hunley)
 * Robert Sheehan as Martin Shrike
 * Jeremy Renner as William Brandt
 * Aaron Paul as Rick Meade
 * Simon Pegg as Benji Dunn
 * Ving Rhames as Luther Stickell
 * Rebecca Ferguson as Ilsa Faust
 * Sean Harris as Solomon Lane
 * Paula Patton as Jane Carter
 * Vanessa Kirby as Alanna Mitsopolis/The White Widow
 * Vanessa Redgrave as Max Mitsopolis
 * Angela Basset as Erica Sloane
 * Simon McBurney as Atlee
 * Michelle Monaghan as Julia Meade
 * Wes Bentley as Erik
 * Frederick Schmidt as Zola Mitsopolis
 * Kristoffer Joner as Nils Delbruuk
 * Alec Baldwin as Alan Hunley

Locations

 * London, England
 * Washington, D.C.
 * Langley, Virginia
 * Prague, Czech Republic
 * Paris, France

Taglines

 * War hits home.
 * A new mission. A new war.