FILM FRENZY

Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning (Photos: Paramount & Skydance)

By Matt Brunson

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – THE FINAL RECKONING
★★½ (out of four)
DIRECTED BY Christopher McQuarrie
STARS Tom Cruise, Hayley Atwell

Like seemingly every other human being on the planet, Tom Cruise is obsessed with sequels. While he’s only made a handful over the course of his career, he recently discussed his plans to move forward with Top Gun 3 and Days of Thunder 2. Top Gun 3 is a no-brainer (at least from a financial standpoint), but Days of Thunder 2? Hell, why not announce Losin’ It 2 while he’s at it?

That desire to extend franchises also applies to his tried-and-true Mission: Impossible series. Based on the popular TV show, the filmic editions kicked off in 1996, with the eighth entry newly arrived in theaters. Yet it might be best to take that word “Final” in Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning with a grain or 12 of salt, as Cruise has already mentioned that he wouldn’t mind returning to the character of Impossible Mission Force (IMF) maverick agent Ethan Hunt yet again. He has since recanted, but who knows what irresistible box office figure lurks in the hearts of men? If this one outgrosses all the others, we might indeed see Mission: Impossible 9 or Mission: impossible – The Final, FINAL Reckoning (Really!) or even Ethan Hunt: Mall Cop.

As I’ve noted in the past, this has been a remarkably consistent series, with only that daft Mission: Impossible II proving to be a DOA dud. So if this is indeed the final franchise flick, it’s a shame the whole shebang has to end on a downward spiral. To be clear, there’s plenty to like in The Final Reckoning, enough to earn this a soft recommendation. But when the last chapter plays less like The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King and more like The Matrix Revolutions (or, probably more accurately, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny), then it’s clear that a little more spit and shine was required.

Previously on Mission: Impossible: A rogue AI known as the Entity has been determined to possess the power to infiltrate any intelligence network in the world, meaning it would be able to control and even obliterate the planet. (In Peter Venkman speak, it would mean “Human sacrifice! Dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria!”) The key to controlling — or destroying — the Entity is literally a key, one made up of two halves that must be joined together to unlock… well, that’s what Ethan was trying to find out all throughout the last picture, 2023’s Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning. Now that he knows the endgame (this one nothing to do with Thanos), he sets about trying to locate the Entity’s source code before his evil nemesis Gabriel (Esai Morales) can take control of the errant AI. As the pro-Ethan faction states, Hunt is the only one capable of saving the world; as the anti-Ethan group declares, his recklessness will kill us all!

As always, assisting Ethan are his brothers-in-arms Luther (Ving Rhames) and Benji (Simon Pegg), with the franchise’s newest leading lady remaining pickpocket extraordinaire Grace (Hayley Atwell), introduced in the last film around the time the scripters were killing off the series’ best leading lady (Rebecca Ferguson as Ilsa Faust). Also joining the heroic cause is one of Dead Reckoning’s chief villains: the assassin Paris (Pom Klemetieff), who was betrayed by Gabriel and wants revenge. More ambiguous in his intentions is Jasper Briggs (Shea Wigham), a government agent who, as it’s revealed in this picture, is actually related to a character from the franchise’s past. And speaking of the past, it was ingenious on the parts of writer-director Christopher McQuarrie and co-scripter Erik Jendresen to bring back a character none of us ever expected to see again — no fair revealing who, but this person ends up being a major contributor to this new entry’s plotline.

Every movie in this franchise save Brian De Palma’s 1996 original has run over two hours, and with a generous length of 170 minutes, Final Reckoning turns out to be the longest of them all. Yet not all of those minutes are used wisely, resulting in one of the very few films in the M:I stable where the length is felt. Much of it is of course because we have to see every single step Ethan (meaning producer-star-demigod Tom Cruise) takes to get from any given Point A to Point B, but it’s also because of the necessity of building up a plot that ends up strangling itself with so much techno-talk. Rather than invest more in its characters, this one invests more in an increasingly convoluted storyline that doesn’t always make sense — or, more accurately, isn’t always made clear. Even after mountains of dry dialogue explaining its abilities, the extent of what exactly the Entity can do is still fuzzy, more so since some of those in charge assert that Ethan destroying the Entity would be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad thing.

Then there’s the fact that the makers of this movie felt that it needed to relate in some way to practically every other past entry — that was already mentioned above by having Wigham’s character be blood-related to a past player, but there are other instances, such as having a MacGuffin in an earlier entry now be tied to the Entity. The Daniel Craig Bond flicks also tried to bundle everything together with such outlandish stretches, and this one is even less successful in making this retroactive plotting work.

Nobody wants to be that moviegoer who clears his throat and states, “What he did in that scene was impossible!” But it should be noted that Ethan Hunt is now basically Superman without the colorful tights, able to defy the laws of science in a single bound. I could accept him somehow managing to hang onto an airplane that goes up and down like a rollercoaster and spins around like a top — after all, that’s the sort of crazy action set-piece this series was built around — but I had to openly guffaw when he strips down to his undies in the subfreezing waters of the Bering Sea. It isn’t macho enough to be in such ultracold water wearing scuba gear — best to show he’s realllly tough by outfitting him like Tarzan. (Of course, even this isn’t the most unbelievable thing about the film. Angela Bassett plays the U.S. President, ridiculous casting in light of the fact that the majority of the American people would do anything to avoid electing a black woman, even voting for a known tyrant and psychopath. But I digress…)

It’s always nice to see Rhames and Pegg in their respective roles — they’ve generally provided this series with most of its humor and its heart — and there’s a welcome newcomer to the cast. Sadly, it’s not Ted Lasso’s Hannah Waddington, who has too little to do as an aircraft carrier commander, but Severance’s Tramell Tillman as a submarine commander. He doesn’t have much more to work with than Waddington, but the way in which he carries himself and the manner in which he speaks — he’s laid-back but curious, questioning but decisive, reserved but charismatic — makes the character stand out. If there is indeed another M:I odyssey, Ethan Hunt could do worse than ask this guy to join his team.