‘Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning’ (review)

“I need you to trust me. One last time.”
– Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise)

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is possibly the proverbial swan song of a three-decade-long journey for Ethan Hunt and his sometimes disavowed band of rogue IMF agents.

It is the culmination of what could be a complete career’s worth of films for some that began in Prague in 1996 when a small covert team of misfit spies was systematically wiped out except for their charming and charismatic, and maverick leader, Ethan Hunt, played by Tom Cruise.

Who knew that 30 years later we would still be following the adventures of Ethan Hunt and his IMF team as they save the world time and time again.

Hunt’s actions and their choices through seven films and countless near-world-ending missions have all led us here.

From the opening summary of the previous movie’s important plot points from the Artificial Intelligence and the film’s cyber” boogyman, known as The Entity, to the final scene before the closing credits roll, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is a cavalcade of pageantry and extravaganza that I have whiplash from all the insanity I witnessed.

“Our lives are not defined by any one action. Our lives are the sum of our choices.”
-Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames)

We have come a long way from floppy discs, rubber masks, alt. usenet newsgroups, and bad green screen effects.

M:I – The Final Reckoning is a whirlwind of fast-paced action sequences, stitched together with some of the most extensive expository montages I have ever witnessed in cinematic history. The multiple montages along with a several of very long winded expository speeches do all the heavy lifting to keep the audience caught up with the past 30 odd years since the original mission, that sent Ethan Hunt on the run to clear his name after his Impossible Missions Force team were all brutally murdered by his former boss, Jim Phelps (Jon Voight). I mean, there are many in the audience at this screening who weren’t even born when the third film came out, so I can kinda see their point

McQuarrie pays off a seemingly innocuous throw-away line of dialogue from the first film and explains MacGuffins from the third film. The Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning team has woven in many minor and major details from the past seven films. It feels like the creators are afraid that no one will have any idea what the heck is going on without the myriad information dumps (unless you are like me and watch all these films at least once a year).

As I pointed out in a previous M:I film review I did, these movies can be pretty convoluted on their own, let alone when combined with the 30-year history of chaotic stories.

The reward for us having to “recap” everything every 20 minutes is that director Christopher McQuarrie and Cruise give us some of the most spectacular action sequences and stunts that we have come to expect from the franchise.

At times, though, I feel like I literally witnessed nearly 3 hours of the definition of “Sometimes more is not necessarily better. It’s just more, ” and why they say “show, don’t tell” when making a movie.

That being said, let me say that I thoroughly enjoyed the crap out of this movie.

“It is written”
– Paris (Pom Klementieff)

The Final Reckoning delivers on many fronts.

It is EXACTLY what you come to a M:I, Tom Cruise stunt fest for. Improbable plots, enough MacGuffins to start your own Highland clan, bonkers as f*ck stunts featuring the venerable Mr. Cruise hanging, falling, running, and almost dying, left and right, and enough nonsensical high-tech, technobabble to make an MIT professor a complete luddite by the finale.

But here is the thing, I feel like we have reached the “Invisible car that can drive backwards up a wall and ceiling made of ice while a space laser tries to kill Bond” moment of the franchise. I wonder if this is truly the “final” Mission: Impossible film that the title alludes to or if this is just the newest entry and in 3 years we shall see Tom Cruise in outer space wearing an authentic Apollo spacesuit, riding a crippled satellite al la Slim Pickens in Dr. Strangelove back to Earth while saving the world from yet another enigmatic shadowy foe. I mean, what the heck can Ethan Hunt do at this point to outdo what he did in this film?

And by Ethan Hunt, I obviously mean Tom Cruise. What other crazy-ass thing can Tom hang from, fall from, jump off of, run down, run up, get slammed into, or run over by that will impress audiences worldwide to make making another one of these missions seem impossible enough to justify making another one of these films?

It doesn’t matter that he continually plays Tom Cruise in whichever Tom Cruise films he stars in. All that is needed of him is that he be all the Tom Cruise he can be. The rest does not matter.

Tom Cruise is an entertainer and a showman of the highest degree. He wants his audience entertained and rolicking in their seats whether it is in a Jordan’s Furniture IMAX theater complete with “butt kickahs”, a drive-in theater on a summers evening, or the comfort of your very own couch while you sip your beverage of choice and snacking on whatever it is that pleases you. Tom Cruise’s only mission, and he chooses to accept, is to make sure you, the movie-watching audience, are thrilled and captivated by the spectacle he has created.

And spectacle, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, is.

It may be time, should he continue, to go the Casino Royale route and reboot the franchise with himself as the mentor “Mr. Phelps” role and introduce a new stable of young, hungry recruits to choose, should they accept.

But until that time, I will say that Mr. Cruise has done a bang-up job at creating eight of the most entertaining films and a franchise that I continually go back to when I require some fun and exciting popcorn visual fare.

Excellent job, Sir. Mission, well accomplished.

*  *  *  *  *
Produced by Tom Cruise, Christopher McQuarrie
Written by Christopher McQuarrie, Erik Jendresen
Based on Mission: Impossible by Bruce Geller
Starring Tom Cruise, Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Henry Czerny, Angela Bassett
Directed by Christopher McQuarrie