Ethan Hunt and his team try to take down a rogue AI and its acolytes in the direct follow-up to Dead Reckoning and disappointing franchise closer Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning.
For nearly thirty years, Tom Cruise has been chasing danger with death-defying stunts and twisty espionage in Mission: Impossible, eight films based upon the seven-season television show. Brian DePalma’s complicated feature broke down the doors in 1996, followed by John Woo’s mess with M:I 2. But JJ Abrams’ franchise reboot M:I III that set the tone and largess, building to the action-perfection of Fallout (I’m not sure I blinked during its climax). Its follow-up, Dead Reckoning, was often lost in a sigh-inducing McGuffin leading to messy plotting, but was saved by several amazing sequences, such as the tense airport “chase” or the train sequence. Unfortunately, the back half (as that was part one) worsens the McGuffin and plotting, but loses the action draw, leading to such a disappointment.
The issues with The Final Reckoning stem from one main cause: it’s sloppy. In writing, editing, acting, and plotting, it’s a loose, frustrating mess. Director (of the last three as well) Christopher McQuarrie, writing with Erik Jendresen, seems to know it’s a confusing ball of plot from the get-go, spending about 90 minutes with some of the most direct expositional dialogue and cutting I’ve seen. For some reason, they have assumed the audience has either not seen or completely forgotten everything about the previous seven films, or even just a few minutes ago, as it presents a greatest hits of big moments in the series, along with telling us directly who is who and why over and over again. Sorry, we don’t need to flash to Luther every time his name is said; we know who he is. We also don’t need to cut to something from ninety seconds ago. We remember!
For a movie that tells you its plot repeatedly is also needly complicated. The story has the highest stakes but the lowest care about it. One of the weaknesses of Dead Reckoning was the villains in the rogue AI, The Entity, and its human avatars; head-scratching goals, and functioning wholly as a McGuffin. They want to destroy the world for… um.. Reasons? While not new to the franchise, it’s always dealt with people fighting over a gizmo, such as Part III and its rabbit foot, but that had a weight thanks to Philip Seymour Hoffman’s great villain performance. In a fun return, the Rabbit’s Foot connects to this film. There are a few throwbacks to earlier films, some of which work (the coder from the iconic drop-in in 1996 is a welcome return, a “Son of Previous Character” reveal is not). Final Reckonging doubles, nay triples, down on it, in adding two more gizmos for the far too many sets of characters to chase after, fight over, and try to use (in a strange turn of events, at one point two people are fighting for control of the same object to try to do… the same thing). Little adds up in the wants and actions, established smart characters act in incredibly dumb ways, solely to not end the plot right now in ways that are insulting to the thinking audience.
Perhaps the rough start turned me off to the back half when the film gains steam, remembers it’s an action film, and gets the pieces where they are ready to be moved around. When I revisit, I’ll be tempted to skip the first hour and a half and see if I can properly enjoy the two larger action sequences. A trip into a sunken submarine should have excited me. It’s a gimbal set-up, as Hunt flies around a shifting series of rooms. Gimbals always make me happy. The planning and design that goes into something that looks great is exciting. But it’s cut so oddly, the tension seeps from the scene. The advertised bi-plane sequence is often thrilling, but also suffers from strange choices, feeling like a lesser version of the series high helicopter chase in Fallout.
That said, I appreciate the sheer amount of work, talent, planning, skill, and straight-up “going for it” of these sequences. On a technical level, they are huge and complicated. It’s astounding what Cruise and the stunt teams across the films have put together, often upping the ante and doing everything they can to astonish and wow the audience more than any other franchise. This deserves every accolade to get out into the world and present as much as they can as practically as possible. It’s a rarity these days to approach action in this way, avoiding overly computer-generated, green-screen, blandly planned slug fests. I wish the film around this love of huge cinema was better, especially after so many great entries. Tom Cruise is insane at crowd-pleasing, and I love him for it.
I feel bad for the talented actors gathered together to run through. Whether it be series regulars Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, or newer team members Hayley Atwell, Pom Klementieff, and of course, Tom Cruise, all seem lost and pushing through. They’re mostly regulated to high melodrama of shouting lines and exposition, telling us exactly what’s going on, and moving through from scene to scene with no real weight. I do want a hit of whatever Esai Morales was on as cartoonish villain Gabriel; at least he is having a good time.
I’m not mad at Mission: Impossible – Final Reckoning, I’m disappointed by it. With a needlessly complicated plot, atrocious exposition, and all the tension edited out of the should-be-great action sequences, the last in a great series is a letdown. But everyone else seems to like it, listen to them, see for yourself how wrong I might be.