Movies & TV / Reviews
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning Review
Image Credit: Paramount Pictures
Loading...
Directed By: Christopher McQuarrie
Written By: Christopher McQuarrie & Erik Jendresen; Based on the Television Series Created by Bruce Geller
Runtime: 169 minutes
MPA Rating: Rated PG-13
Tom Cruise – Ethan Hunt
Hayley Atwell – Grace
Esai Morales – Gabriel
Simon Pegg – Benji Dunn
Pom Klementieff – Paris
Ving Rhames – Luther Stickell
Shea Whigham – Jasper Briggs
Greg Tarzan Davis – Theo Degas
Henry Czerny – Eugene Kittridge
Rolf Saxon – William Donloe
Angela Bassett – President Erika Sloane
Tramell Tillman – Captain Bledsoe
Hannah Waddingham – Admiral Neely
Mark Gatiss – Angstrom
Charles Parnell – Richards
Holt McCallany – Secretary of Defense Bernstein
Nick Offerman – Sydney
Janet McTeer – Walters
Lucy Tulugarjuk – Tapeesa
Carey Elwes – Denlinger
The Mission: Impossible film franchise reaches a significant culmination with its eighth entry, The Final Reckoning. Despite the marketing hype surrounding the film and its suggestive title, it’s hard to believe this will be the last installment and the last outing for series headliner Tom Cruise as the resourceful, unstoppable Ethan Hunt. Nonetheless, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning treats the narrative with the grandeur and respect of its nearly thirty-year history, achieving an exceptional cinematic spectacle where the plot sometimes falls short. However, Cruise’s infinite charisma works as a sufficient glue to hold things together toward a thrilling conclusion.
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning picks up two months after 2023’s unfortunately titled Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, Part 2. The self-aware, autonomous, parasitic A.I. antagonist, dubbed “The Entity,” has made its presence known across the globe. The Entity is seizing control of the world’s nuclear weapons, prepping its endgame. It now falls on Ethan Hunt and his disavowed team of IMF agents to pick up the slack and find the means to stop The Entity. The problem is that the A.I. parasite’s source code, necessary to de-fang the system, is stuck in the Russian Sevastopol sub that The Entity sank in the previous movie.
Hunt and his team have no idea where Sevastopol sank. Russia is scrambling to find the source code as well. World governments are preparing for Armageddon. Additionally, Gabriel (Morales) seeks the means to control The Entity, much like CIA Director Eugene Kittridge (Czerny), wanting to use The Entity’s power to tip the scales for the United States. The clock is ticking, and time is running out for Ethan Hunt. The stakes have never been higher, and the odds of success have never been lower. But as Anthony Hopkins said in the second movie, “Well, this is not mission difficult, Mr. Hunt, it’s mission impossible. Difficult should be a walk in the park for you.” It’s all in a day’s work for unstoppable Übermensch, Ethan Hunt.
The action, spectacle, and scope of The Final Reckoning look unmatched. McQuarrie has always excelled at staging escalating setpieces that beautifully mix character quirks, emotional stakes, and epic scale. The Final Reckoning is a gorgeous-looking movie, and despite a reported budget as high as $400 million, the money didn’t go to waste. McQuarrie stages some incredible, riveting setpieces that look unique from any action movie previously shown onscreen, and they are expertly lensed by cinematographer Fraser Taggart. The action scenes look terrific, thanks to Cruise’s stunning stunt work, which allows for more immersive action sequences, many filmed practically in-camera, where Cruise as Hunt is at the center of the action. Cruise’s willingness to perform many of his own stunts has always proven a major boon for the franchise, which pays off exceptionally well in The Final Reckoning.
The Final Reckoning nicely builds to the underwater sequence, where Hunt must salvage the remains of the Sevastapol at the bottom of the ocean. The film’s underwater mission highlights one instance where the setup of the endeavor from the previous movie pays off wonderfully. Eventually, the underwater submarine sequence unfolds into the most suspenseful, nerve-wracking, and nail-biting sequence of the entire franchise, and that says a lot for a franchise built on insane stunts and action sequences. Few movie stars could have handled this sequence as well as Cruise because he must perform the watery trek alone.
Hunt takes a perilous, lonely journey, venturing into an abyss to save a world that will never recognize his exploits. McQuarrie beautifully escalates the tension throughout the sequence, with one reversal after another. It’s difficult not to hold your breath and gasp for air multiple times while watching Ethan Hunt stare down a watery grave, which becomes the crown jewel of the film and the entire franchise, worth the price of admission.
The film’s main drawback comes from the AI antagonist, The Entity, which fails as a concept. As a villain and character, The Entity is undercooked. It’s a rehash of similar digitized adversaries going back over the last forty years of cinema and fails to break any sufficiently new ground. The Entity cast aside Gabriel for his previous failures, so Gabriel now seeks the means to control his former overseer. Morales brings an unsettling calmness and stoicism to his performance, but the character plays as woefully underdeveloped. The first film hinted at a previous relationship or association between Gabriel and Hunt, but The Final Reckoning avoids following that thread further, which is strange considering this is a nearly three-hour movie.
Eventually, The Final Reckoning becomes bogged down by a series of contrivances necessary to enable finding the means to stop The Entity. Thus, one cannot think too hard about various plot devices because nothing about The Entity makes much sense. By all intents and purposes, McQuarrie created an unstoppable, immortal villain. Even if The Entity gets shut down, it only potentially works as a stopgap. Denlinger mentioned in Dead Reckoning that The Entity evolved from a copy of a prototype, meaning the original version and encoding of what became The Entity still exist. The genie can be put back in the bottle, but Pandora’s box of AI has already been opened and can’t be closed. Much like nuclear power, the knowledge can’t be undiscovered.
Grace (Hayley Atwell) continues to impress as a nice addition to the franchise, despite the unwavering feeling that her parts should have gone to Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson). Ilsa sadly met her end in the last movie. Atwell does admirable work, but McQuarrie continually holds back with her character. The plot provides some interesting ideas and moments with Grace, but The Final Reckoning avoids any serious romantic development between Ethan and Grace. Does Ethan want to find love again? Does Ethan refuse love because his duty and the mission come first? How does Grace feel? Maybe those questions will be answered in the next movie. In a story that’s three hours long, some additional passion and romance would have been nice, but recently, movies are becoming more disappointingly void of that.
That said, McQuarrie excels in showcasing an impressive supporting cast. The film’s underwater segment introduces the breakout character, Captain Bledsoe, portrayed with a soft-spoken, yet beguiling, magnetism by Tramell Tillman. Tillman’s breakout performance showcases how McQuarrie excels at creating great rapport and small moments with seemingly minor characters.
McQuarrie does not want the audience to dwell on the larger problems he creates with the emergence of The Entity. It’s merely a one-off villain who Hunt and the IMF must defeat to save the world. However, the bigger narrative problem emerges with the ending, which weirdly contradicts the entire storyline. The problematic ending reflects how The Entity is a significantly flawed concept, and it’s the weakest part of the film’s premise. McQuarrie crafts stunning action and individual character moments and exceptionally showcases the opposing sides’ interplay, but the plot sometimes lacks sensible cohesion.
Thankfully, Cruise’s engaging performance and chemistry with his IMF team make up for the nonsensical Entity. The Final Reckoning calls back to previous entries, creating amusing payoffs from events set up decades ago, including the return of a familiar face from the original 1996 film. The connective elements of Ethan Hunt’s story work much better than The Entity as a plot device, and that reinforces that this is Ethan Hunt’s story and Tom Cruise’s franchise. Any predilection of Cruise passing the torch or handing off the franchise’s reins repeatedly flies out the window.
Ultimately, the plot suffers from various uneven and underdeveloped elements resulting from doubling down on The Entity as the plot’s A.I. boogeyman. The singular moments and action setpieces in The Final Reckoning are fantastic, but the plot needed a complete overhaul. Ultimately, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning works best for its cinematic spectacle, Cruise’s charismatic performance, and its overall reverence for the franchise.
