The Ext. Street Blog
The London chase from
Mission: Impossible - Fallout
So many chase scenes in action movies rely on editing room sleight-of-hand to stitch together a sequence that is both exciting and visually interesting. Shots are usually picked due to the physical characteristics of the environment often in locations far apart from each other and edited together later to create a sequence that could never occur in reality. So, it’s quite surprising to find the London chase in the middle act of Mission: Impossible - Fallout is fairly coherent in terms of it’s geography. Following Ethan Hunt’s route through London, his superhuman jumping ability notwithstanding, one could conceivably retrace his steps.
Spoilers follow.
The action kicks off with Hunt (Tom Cruise) in vaults beneath the city, in hot pursuit of Walker (Henry Cavill). Hunt emerges in Canon Alley, slamming into the IMF surveillance van. With a trio of goons in pursuit he turns south, meeting three more goons closing in down St. Paul’s Churchyard. He continues into the Cathedral itself via the north entrance.
Interrupting a funeral in the cathedral, Hunt then climbs a spiral staircase to the whispering gallery and is then out onto the cathedral’s roof. His route is made much easier by some helpfully placed scaffolding.
Hunt then makes the first of his amazing jumps. He jumps clear over Condor House tumbling to a landing atop Leonardo Royal London St Paul’s hotel - a leap of 75 metres!
He sprints across the hotel’s glass ceiling before his next leap. It’s only 12m over Knightrider Street onto Faraday House.
We cut away to Walker’s casual walk through the crowds in Blackfriars station before returning to Hunt on the roof of Baynard House. This would have required another jump, but only of 27 metres.
Hunt hits his VO2 Max running westward on the roof of Baynard House before leaping another gap of only 13m. He must be tired now, because he only just makes the distance and wastes much time scrambling back up the building. He would surely regret not just running around the gap as he is still essentially on the same building and there is a clear path for him.
Not to worry, he makes good progress across the roof of the Network Rail building and into the office there. He then jumps from the window onto the roof of Blackfriars station. A drop of two or three storeys (depending on which angle you’re seeing), which should be easy for him, but he does pause for some comedic effect.
Hunt races across the roof of the station, itself running across the Thames. Once south of the river, he inexplicably turns right to drop down to ground level, and then passes under the station eastwards. He could easily have dropped down the east side of the bridge and saved himself some time.
Walker makes his way to the Tate Modern gallery, finds a special door for himself that leads to a lift to take him to the top of the tower. There, he is collected by helicopter and makes his escape. Hunt gives up the pursuit here, unwilling to try jumping onto the helicopter. He probably doesn’t have a decent enough run-up for it.
All images on this page made with OpenStreetMap.org using Streets.gl.
More blog posts coming soon.