The Mission: Impossible films are among the best action movies of all time. There’s absolutely no question about that. For almost 30 years, Tom Cruise and team have delivered tense stories and incredible action, blowing up our screens with explosive espionage exploits chapter after chapter. So it comes to reason that the so-called final installment would be the biggest and best bang of all, right? Eh, not really. However, it sure is the slowest and the longest.
From Mission: Impossible III to Mission: Impossible – Fallout, we’ve been spoiled. The stories felt grounded, the stakes felt high and real, and the brilliant stunts and action serviced those stakes well. However, I will be the first to admit that Dead Reckoning, to me, was a step back from what’d we had seen with the prior installments. So it was going to be an uphill battle for me to get into the story of The Final Reckoning, as the second half of The Entity saga. I was right to think that.
The Final Reckoning picks up some time after Ethan Hunt (Cruise) and his team (Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, and Hayley Atwell) claimed the two cruciform keys from Gabriel (Esai Morales). The Entity has taken control of much of the planet, destroying economies and technology, and is taking steps to take over the world’s nukes as well. To stop it, Hunt and team need to get the source code for The Entity, hidden in sunken Russian sub, The Sevastopol, as well as a “poison pill” to destroy it.
First, Ethan has to take a full hour of this three hour movie to ask a bunch of people for permission to save the world, including guest stars Henry Czerny, Angela Bassett, Hannah Waddingham, and Tramell Tillman. I sound like I’m being facetious, but this literally happens in this movie. Apart from one to two explosive events, the first hour is mainly a combination of clips from past Mission: Impossible films and characters re-explaining over and over what they need to do to help Cruise’s Hunt perform his next big underwater stunt, and getting approval from everyone to let him do it.
It’s choppy, unengaging, and literally spins its wheels going nowhere for the full first third of the film. Half the movie is spent with perplexing close-up shots of faces talking. The dialogue is comprised of roundabout debates, and broken record explanations about how risky it’ll be to get Item #1 and Item #2, and how only Ethan can do it. It’s frustrating to say the least. We understand it, guys. It’s called Mission: Impossible for a reason, and we’ve been watching them be the “only ones who can do it” for nearly 30 years. So why anyone would need a full hour to perform these explanations and pleas is completely confounding. I know geopolitical situations are complex, and they want to make things more tense, but it had almost the exact opposite effect, blindly reiterating stakes we’ve seen over and over again.
And let’s be clear: I’m fine with the Mission movies following the same formula and having the same stakes every movie. That’s not the issue. The issue is this installment feels the need to repeat it over and over and over for no reason. It gets to the point where the rest of it is almost not even worth it.
*Almost*
I am being hard on the film and its first act, that’s true. However, there’s a reason why. It’s because from the underwater stunt forward, the movie is actually quite impressive. Everything from there feels epic. The stunt work and the action set pieces are exciting as hell. Cruise puts his goddamn body on the line with every amazing feat he pulls off on screen.
The underwater scenes are so thrilling, watching him escape insurmountable odds.. This is what we came for! This is what we want. From that moment on, the movie finally delivers. We get some pretty exciting standoffs, and, of course, the much hyped plane sequence. That plane sequence, along with the underwater heist/escape are well worth the price of an IMAX ticket. These are dangerous, planned, well coordinated stunts, and the crew and Cruise pull everything off perfectly. That’s the real IMF team at work! That’s why we fell in love with this series.
The pity of it all is, however, that the franchise has eventually become one in which the story, the script, and the characters are serving the stunt work and the set pieces, rather than the other way around. When we look back at Fallout, arguably the best installment in the franchise, we were actually invested in the stakes and the characters because things were personal. Solomon Lane hated Ethan Hunt and wanted to take everything away from him, including Julia. Ethan’s rivalry with Henry Cavill’s Walker was palpable. Certainly, when Ethan is hanging off a net attached to a helicopter, or running and leaping between buildings, it wasn’t anything we hadn’t seen before. However, we were in awe because we cared about what was happening.
The difference with The Final Reckoning is that the first act essentially only exists to tell us how crazy the underwater sequence is going to be. We don’t need any of this hyped up. We simply need it to exist. So why not just sum it up in one scene, and get on with it? Have the sequence be delivered without hype or build up, and surprise everyone everywhere. In fact, it runs the risk of overselling the stunt (though, thankfully, it still delivers) when you talk about it way too much. However, that’s what The Final Reckoning does. Like its protagonist, the film is essentially asking you relentlessly for permission to entertain you. It gets you from scene to scene just to slowly build up the moment, and thus, it disappoints.
Additionally, I really have no idea how this movie serves as “the final reckoning.” Yes, it cleverly calls back to previous movies (perhaps leaning on this device a bit too much), but to what real end? One character might face their “finale” but by the end of the movie, everything ends like any other Mission: Impossible film. So for me, there was really no pay off from the nostalgia, the needless clips, or essentially this entire mission. That might be the most disappointing part of this overly long, and convoluted installment. I thought it would matter, but it really doesn’t feel like it did.
Having said that, from a performance standpoint, everyone is good. Cruise, of course, is playing Ethan in top form. Pegg gives a much more somber, world-worn performance as Benji. Pom Klementieff does a really great job as Paris, showcasing a character evolving from a callous amoral killer to a compassionate member of the team. Although we barely get to know him, Greg Tarzan Davis ends up being pretty lovable as Degas. We are also treated to a fun “raise hell” performance from Tramell Tillman, who leaves the biggest impression out of the new cast members. Bassett knocks it out of the park, making the concept of playing powerful world leaders look like a cakewalk.
The one character that just never really resonated with me, however, is Atwell’s Grace. While Atwell is charming and sympathetic as always, her character felt like an unnecessary substitute for Rebecca Ferguson’s Ilsa Faust; a superior, bolder character that had more in common with Ethan than Grace, and stronger chemistry. It’s just a fairly poorly written and awkward relationship, with a character that we really aren’t all that invested in.
From a technical perspective, a movie with a price tag of $400M is going to look and sound great. Truly, Cruise and team are pushing the boundaries of the theatrical experience with terrific sound design and visuals, as well as breathtaking cinematography that captures and immerses you into the grand globe-sweeping locations the film’s biggest set pieces transport you to. The action is incredibly well shot, and when it goes hard, it’s flawlessly delivered to you. Lorne Balfe’s epic franchise themes absolutely elevate the suspense and tension, even when very little is going on. So all of the technical aspects of the film shoot high and score big.
The unfortunate thing is that, for all of its strongest points, everything in Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning ultimately adds up to something moderately disappointing. The formulaic Entity storyline, that has been built upon for two movies, never manages to get less clunky, or more engaging. Rather than focus on trying to make it, or some of the newer characters from Dead Reckoning any more interesting, the film chooses to throw in reaching connections to previous installments and have Tom Cruise tell you multiple times how he’s the only one who can save the world. Thank God for the action sequences, because frankly, it would be hard to give this installment any sort of a recommendation. The good news is, it’s still world’s better than Mission: Impossible II. However, for better or worse, I’ll just have to accept that this time around, the mission was sluggish and rather pointless.
Rating: 6.5/10
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