Daredevil Tom Cruise and his 'Mission: Impossible' wow Cannes

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CANNES, France — Tom Cruise's "Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning" made its big grandstand premiere at the Cannes film festival Wednesday, with the first reviews saying it more than lives up to its steamroller hype.

"What a rush!" The Guardian declared in its five-star love letter to Cruise's $400-million behemoth, calling him a modern "superhuman action hero Harold Lloyd... forever young, forever fit, never saying die in the face of this preposterous Armageddon clock."

The Hollywood Reporter had earlier quoted critics emerging from the first press screenings calling its action sequences "astonishing", "jaw-dropping" and "just insane".

With some fretting that the near-three-hour epic -- the eighth in the high-octane franchise -- could be the last, Cruise and director Christopher McQuarrie have dropped contradictory clues about its future.

Both have also gone on a gruelling globetrotting tour to promote one of the most expensive movies ever made after being delayed by Covid lockdowns and Hollywood strikes.

But all the blood, sweat and dollars appear to have been worth it -- though European film industry site Screen complained that it was "more stunt than substance" and too "in service to its own lore and its hero".

Hours before the premiere, McQuarrie revealed Cruise -- who does his own stunts -- took his risk-taking a little far during a shoot in South Africa.

The crew feared the 62-year-old star had passed out after climbing out on the wing of a stunt biplane he was piloting alone.

"Tom had pushed himself to the point that he was so physically exhausted" after spending 22 minutes being blasted by the propeller -- more than twice the time safety guidelines allowed, McQuarrie told an audience in Cannes.

"He was laying on the wing of the plane, his arms were hanging over the front of the wing. We could not tell if he was conscious or not," said the American filmmaker, who has shot the four last movies of the franchise.

Loves the fear

Cruise, a trained acrobatics pilot, had agreed a hand signal to show if he was in trouble, McQuarrie said.

But "you can't do this when you're unconscious", he added.

Cruise smiled sheepishly as the director told the story, stressing that years of preparation went into the movies, which he compared to the workings of "a Swiss watch".

But in the end, "I like the feeling (of fear). It's just an emotion for me. It's something that is not paralysing.

"I don't mind kind of encountering the unknown", insisting that "this is what I dreamed of doing as a kid," Cruise said.

The star has also been sharing other heart-stopping behind-the-scenes footage of other stunts he did for the movie on social media, including a freefall jump from a helicopter at 3,000 metres (10,000 feet).

The blockbuster's big-name premiere lightened the mood at Cannes after a highly political opening day began with accusations that Hollywood was ignoring "genocide" in Gaza and ended with Robert De Niro lambasting Donald Trump as "America's philistine president".

Shadow of tariffs

Even Cruise's iron-clad optimism has come under stress with the industry shaken by Trump's threat to stick 100-percent tariffs on movies "produced in foreign lands".

With "Mission: Impossible" among Hollywood's most globalised franchises, shot on a dizzying roster of exotic locations, Cruise shut down questions about the issue at a promotional event in South Korea last week.

Cruise's films lean heavily on London studios.

A band serenaded him and his cast on the red carpet with Lalo Schifrin's theme tune from the original Mission: Impossible TV series -- a rather subdued welcome compared to the last time Cruise came to Cannes.

In 2022, he was greeted by a flyover of eight French fighter jets billowing red, white and blue smoke to promote "Top Gun: Maverick".

"The Final Reckoning" is set for release in Europe and the Middle East from May 21. The United States and several other countries will have to wait two or three days longer.

However, Indian, Australian and Korean cinemagoers will be able to see it from this weekend.

The competition for the Palme d'Or award for best film in Cannes -- for which "Mission: Impossible" is not in the running -- kicked off on Wednesday with "Sound of Falling", a haunting tale of four generations of women growing up on a German farm.

It received rave reviews, with Deadline calling German filmmaker Mascha Schilinski's second feature "a masterclass in ethereal, unnerving brilliance".