Film Review — Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning

Not up to previous instalments, but Tom Cruise’s daredevil antics still provide an entertaining blast of action thrills

Credit: Paramount

The latest showcasing of Tom Cruise’s increasingly elaborate flirtations with death marks a possible end for this hugely entertaining run of big-screen adaptations of Bruce Geller’s TV series. Of course, if it does brilliantly at the box office (it probably will), expect another. Or perhaps a legacy sequel a few years down the line, with Cruise taking a supporting role, and a new plucky young lead accepting the impossible missions (and near-suicidal stunts) from devices that self-destruct in five seconds. Whatever the future of the series, Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning constitutes a solid close to its current incarnation, even if it doesn’t quite scale the exhilarating heights of the two previous instalments.

Rest assured, I won’t discuss the plot in any detail, though let’s face it: We don’t come to Mission: Impossible for something as rudimentary as “plot”. Nor, it seems, do Cruise and director Christopher McQuarrie. The series is apparently built around the action set pieces, with the story figured out later. Such sentiments make my inner purist storyteller bristle, but when confronted with thrills this spectacular, I wind up bludgeoned into submission. This is particularly true of Mission: Impossible: Fallout (2018); still the high watermark of the series, and an instalment with set piece after magnificent set piece of action cinema par excellence. It is absurd to be snobby about such adrenaline-pumping magnificence, even if the story is considered secondary.

However, in the case of The Final Reckoning, the cracks in the narrative façade are beginning to show. Yes, the missions involved are every bit as impossible. The odds are so stacked against Ethan Hunt (Cruise) and his team to such a lunatic, apocalyptic, world-ending degree that it winds up feeling rather grim for at least the first hour. I get that this is an End Times-style raising of stakes, with an unstoppable AI villain that feels more like the Antichrist than anything traditionally seen in the spy thriller world. I understand the need to make it feel dangerous and that no beloved character is safe. But quite honestly, this one could have benefited from a smidgeon more comic relief. The banter and fun of earlier films seems somewhat drained this time. That’s a shame, as humour provides a great counterpoint to darker themes.

On the one hand, the AI villain (a holdover from the previous film) certainly struck a chord with me. The real-world AI threat to artists and creatives of all kinds, inflicted upon us by maddeningly short-sighted, because-we-can tech bro types, makes watching this cheeringly anti-AI film a pleasurably affirming experience. Obviously, Cruise and co are determinedly old-school in their approach, opting for minimal CGI and the kinds of daredevil stunts for which this series is famous, which adds further integrity to their inherently anti-AI messaging. The End Times-ish tone also contains a lot of symbolic imagery echoing Christian ideas about sacrifice, death, resurrection, and the triumph of good over evil. All of this works well.

Credit: Paramount

Unfortunately, on the other hand, having an AI villain means this lacks the dramatic human conflict of, say, the clashes with the sinister Solomon Lane (Sean Harris) or Owen Davian (Philip Seymour Hoffman) in earlier films. AI acolyte Gabriel (Esai Morales) does all right in his limited scenes, but he doesn’t have the same menace. I confess I also felt the absence of the wonderful Isla Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) this time. Come to that, I wish Alanna Mitsopolis (Vanessa Kirby) had returned too. Beyond that, for much of the running time, the film short-changes Ethan’s usual gang, including Luther (Ving Rhames), Benji (Simon Pegg), and Grace (Hayley Atwell).

Thankfully, that changes in the second half once the action ramps up. After a somewhat sluggish start, things kick into high gear with a nail-biting sunken submarine infiltration sequence, and that jaw-dropping biplane chase teased in the trailers. It goes without saying that this must be viewed on the biggest screen possible, ideally IMAX. These exhilarating sequences are superbly shot (by cinematographer Fraser Taggart), deftly edited (by Eddie Hamilton), and brilliantly directed. Even though they remix ideas that were arguably done better in previous films, they go a long way to salvaging any lingering sense of one too many trips to the well.

Also on the plus side, it’s fun to see French assassin Paris (Pom Klementieff) again, another holdover from the previous film. Former CIA director, now president, Erika Sloane (Angela Bassett) adds appropriately sombre gravitas. Shea Wigham’s Agent Jasper Briggs is also back, with a few interesting revelations. In fact, the screenplay (by McQuarrie and co-writer Erik Jendresen) tries to tie all eight films together to sometimes clumsy but mostly entertaining effect. The best of these narrative wranglings involves William Donloe (Rolf Saxon), a minor character previously exiled to a “radar tower in Alaska” by Kittridge (Henry Czerny) in the first film.

I could pick further nits. The supporting cast, which also includes Greg Tarzan Davies, Charles Parnell, Mark Gatiss, Holt McCallany, and Tramell Tillman, suffers from a surplus of talent, with Janet McTeer in particular feeling a little wasted. Also, at 170 minutes, this is probably too long. Yet in the end, The Final Reckoning delivers a satisfying, albeit not outstanding, evening’s entertainment. The moment Lalo Schifrin’s iconic theme kicks in, the film promises a good time, and in the end, I wasn’t disappointed. If this winds up being the final film, it’s as good a place as any to bring down the curtain.

(Originally published at Medium.)

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