The final instalment of the Mission Impossible series has it’s cinematic geopolitics eerily correct with AI, Nuclear War, Surgical Strikes, Non State Actors giving the cinema goers a sense of déjà vu, in the shadow of Operation Sindoor.

As the final swan song, the philosophical quotient is dense with questions of right and wrong, and a lady American President which looks like Kamala Harris. The film has got its preferred candidate at least on the screen if not in reality.

The movie dialogues in Intuit, renders the arctic colonial politics bare. The film is high on a DEI score with a female blonde East Asian looking character speaking French and non white characters having decent screen time.

Over the past quarter of a century, the Mission Impossible series has been a cultural constant in my life, with the MI 2 OST still ringing in my years. I was excited to watch the episode in Abu Dhabi with Anil Kapoor, with my desi friends in Singapore during graduate school. I had hoped for a silent jhakkas in the film.

The movie’s strength in its action set pieces are one too many and it stretches at times. It is a joy to watch never aging Tom Cruise in action. The cinematography is breath taking and the series will be missed by die hard fans. Old school James Bond-esque movies have a charm.

This historic hole in the wall eatery in Colaba, is a trip down memory lane to an Indian Ocean aesthetic where Parsi eateries used to dominate the social life of everyday Bombay, the only real Mumbai to be candid.

These spaces are all over the Indian Ocean World from the Karak Kadas in Bur Dubai to the Warungs or Mamaks in Islamcate Nusantara.

These spaces are community care places where neighbourhood uncles banter over commissions and contracts and the taxi wallah comes in for a quick egg bhurji, pav and chai.