“Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning” Teaser Poster
Director: Christopher McQuarrie
Cast: Tom Cruise, Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Henry Czerny, Angela Bassett, Esai Morales, Pom Klementieff, Mariela Garriga, Pasha D. Lychnikoff
Running Time: 170 min.
By Paul Bramhall
It’s been almost 30 years since the original Mission: Impossible hit the screens in 1996, and over the course of 8 movies producer and star Tom Cruise has made it his defining statement on action cinema – loud, adrenaline pumping, minimum CGI, and perhaps most importantly of all, watched in a cinema. As the last bonafide star of a generation, the kind whose name itself is capable of selling movie tickets, it’s undeniably bittersweet that Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning arrives as the final instalment of the franchise, not least because, there’s no one waiting in the wings who does what Cruise does. Aged 62 at the time of its release, it’s understandable that he’s chosen to call it a day when it comes to the death-defying stunts that have come to define the M:I series, and while quitting at the top of your game is admirable, there’s a certain sadness around not having another entry to look forward to.
M:I: TFR (as I’ll refer to it from here on in) is the first entry in the franchise that’s a direct continuation of the last, with 2023’s Mission: Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One (as a sidenote, the sequel was originally intended to have the obvious Dead Reckoning Part Two title, but was later dropped) introducing us to the Entity, a rogue A.I. program that’s infiltrated cyberspace. The sequel picks up with Cruise and his team on the run from various different factions (including their own government), with their possession of a key capable of accessing the Entity’s source code making them the only one’s capable of purging it from the world’s nuclear weapon systems that it’s started to infiltrate. Or more specifically – Ethan Hunt is the only one capable of stopping it.
Any series that’s spanned 30 years and across 8 different entries is going to have a certain weight on its shoulders when it comes to wrapping things up, and with a 170-minute runtime, the first hour of M:I: TFR feels overwhelmingly self-serious and heavy handed in a way the series has never felt before. The world is portrayed as being on the verge of post-apocalyptic chaos, and in an opening voiceover to Cruise spoken by Angela Bassett as the U.S. president (introduced in 2018’s Mission: Impossible – Fallout), he’s propelled to almost mythical status as a highlight reel from the previous entries plays across the screen. Reminders that Cruise is the only person capable of saving the world are littered throughout, as if to constantly hammer home the point that it’s humanity itself that’s on the brink of all out annihilation this time (because the scenes of nuclear bombs being detonated all over the globe aren’t enough), and it all feels a little much.
Arguably a case of not knowing how big of an impact some of the seemingly smaller ingredients of the franchise have until they’re gone, the almost complete absence of humor from much of M:I: TFR makes it the dourest entry of the series. However considering the threat at hand it could also be seen as an understandable choice to dial the humor back, with the occasional one-liners that are thrown in there not always hitting the mark, mainly down to everything surrounding them being so poker faced. The perfect example being at one point Hayley Atwell (Ant-Man) tells Cruise she “likes the long hair”, a line that doubles up as an acknowledgement of his change in appearance from the last entry (Dead Reckoning Part One and The Final Reckoning were originally intended to be filmed back to back, but the COVID-19 pandemic ultimately delayed the shooting of the latter). Unlike Cruise’s hair though, the line falls flat.
Like every M:I entry since 2015’s Rogue Nation, it’s Christopher McQuarrie who both penned the script and sat in the director’s chair, having become Cruise’s go to filmmaker since 2012’s Jack Reacher, and there’s a feeling that the sheer scale of the threat has proven to be a tricky beast to balance onscreen. The constant end of days talk by senior government officials and military higher ups begins to feel ham-fisted, and while the connections made to previous entries (particularly Mission: Impossible III) are smart, the point in the plot they’re introduced only makes them feel like more exposition. Thankfully it’s not all doom and gloom, with the return of a character from the original 1996 Mission: Impossible (who I won’t mention so as not to spoil it) being a stroke of genius, and one that provides M:I: TFR with a surprising amount of heart.
It’s not only the returning cast members who offer up some of the best moments in the latest entry, with a handful of new faces also being welcome additions to the mix. Tramell Tillman (Barron’s Cove) plays the commander of the U.S. submarine Cruise ends up on as if he’s just stepped out of a 1980’s action movie, and somehow it works perfectly, as does Katy O’Brian (Twisters) as a fellow crew member who feels inspired by Vasquez from the 1986 classic Aliens. Fans of DTV action will also no doubt get a kick out of seeing Scott Adkins regular Lee Charles (Accident Man) as a bulking lackey that Cruise has to face off against, even if most of it takes place offscreen.
Indeed despite the lack of any real narrative thrust during the first hour, a crime that can’t be taken lightly when you look at the pacing of any other entry, once Cruise’s trusted team – now consisting of returning members Simon Pegg (Hot Fuzz), Greg Tarzan Davis (Top Gun: Maverick), and Pom Klementieff (The Killer’s Game) – spring into action against a group of Russian militants, M:I: TFR finally finds its groove. It’s immediately followed by Cruise undertaking a deep-sea dive to retrieve the source code, and despite my reservations around underwater action scenes (even the one in Rogue Nation didn’t offer up that many thrills), this time it hits the mark. An impeccably put together sequence consisting purely of Cruise underwater and containing almost no dialogue for several minutes, it’s a classic example of cinema being a visual medium, allowing the visuals alone to tell the story. I was on the edge of my seat the whole time.
It’s the kind of sequence that earns enough goodwill to forgive the drudgery of the first hour, and injects a sense of urgency into the narrative that had so far been missing. The ace up M:I: TFR’s sleeve is of course its aerial finale, that sees Cruise in pursuit of villain Esai Morales (Master Gardener) in, or rather by hanging off, a biplane. The biggest mistake McQuarrie has made with the entries he’s helmed in the M:I franchise remains the opening 10 minutes of his debut with Rogue Nation, when the best stunt of the entire movie – Cruise hanging onto the side of a cargo ship – was framed as a superfluous throwaway pre-credit’s scene. The lack of investment the audience had in the scene (topped off with a decidedly underwhelming final action sequence) felt like it was a wasted opportunity, so almost as if McQuarrie realised the error of his ways, here he re-visits the same setup, this time making it the finale.
If M:I: TFR does mark the last time for Cruise to do one of these death-defying stunts, then he’s definitely put through the wringer, as regardless of how many safety wires have been erased in post-production, the fact is he’s hanging onto a plane for dear life, often through some particularly hairy manoeuvres. As a way to send off the franchise on a high note (quite literally), the sequence achieves its aim with aplomb. Could the more cynical amongst us say it’s essentially a rehash of the finale from 2018’s Fallout , just with biplanes instead of helicopters? Sure, but then that’s like being a fan of kung-fu cinema, and complaining because you watched two of them and they both finished with fight scenes. The fact that the sequence was filmed for real and without any greenscreen offers up a timely reminder that, no matter how good CGI becomes, there’s a tangible difference when you see it done for real.
While M:I: TFR feels like it tries a little too hard to play things serious and place Ethan Hunt as the saviour of the world, in doing so sacrificing some of the key elements that make the M:I franchise so much fun, luckily it still delivers where it counts, offering up a spectacle that no other cinematic series comes close to. Cruise’s thoughts on A.I. are clear, and can perhaps be taken as a metaphor for how he feels about cinema – technology may mean the possibilities are endless, but how many of them will actually be done for real and not in front of a greenscreen? In Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning the message is that nothing can beat the real thing, and when you see Cruise dangling from the wing of a plane several thousand feet up in the air, it’s hard to disagree.
Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 7/10
