‘Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning’ 4K UHD Digital (review)

Paramount Pictures

Mission: Impossible -The Final Reckoning is the eighth and supposedly last movie in the Mission: Impossible franchise.

At least it’s the last to star Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt.

The three-hour picture received less than stellar reviews when it was released this summer but I thought it was exciting all the way through. I chalk up at least some of the negativity to the fact that it’s a direct continuation of 2023’s Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, Part One. In fact, as I understand it, both pictures were filmed simultaneously, with the same stars and crew (partially because Cruise, at 60 now, is getting a bit old for all that running, I would assume).

So basically, you have one nearly six-hour movie.

But wait! They’ve even managed to tie it directly into several plot points in the earlier Mission: Impossible films, making this all one big stunt-filled, explosion-heavy, and surprisingly emotional saga!

When I reviewed the previous M:I film, I pointed out that I had never been much of a fan of Tom Cruise.

In fact, despite having been a big fan of the TV series growing up, I skipped this series until finally catching the third installment on cable. After that I was hooked.

Like on the TV series, you have your main guy heading up an off-the-books team put together specifically to accomplish things that need to be done, but that everyone presumes can’t be done. Cruise is Ethan Hunt, whose doggedness becomes legend as the films go on. His team varies but most of the time includes Simon Pegg as his right-hand man, Benji Dunn, and Ving Rhames as his tech genius, Luther Stickell.

In this one and the last one, we also have Hayley Atwell (the MCU’s Agent Carter), and now he’s recruited the delightfully named but underutilized Pom Klementieff (the MCU’s Mantis), and the equally delightfully named Greg Tarzan Davis (who as far as I know is not part of the MCU).

Having been made before the last election, the President of the United States is here an intelligent, compassionate black woman (Angela Bassett).

Sigh… Anyway, she sends a message to the now rogue Hunt via the traditional self-destructing tape method we first saw on the TV version. She informs him that the essentially sentient AI known as “The Entity” has been taking over global systems on its own and that intel shows the goal to be nuclear destruction of human life.

Hunt has the key he absconded with at the end of the previous picture and she wants him to come to ground and turn it over. I was never quite sure what it would do, but it’s a cool McGuffin.

Ethan chooses, instead, to pursue Gideon, who had worked with the Entity and was now ostracized by it, but was working to gain control over it.

These films are basically the new James Bond films—much more exciting than the more recent 007 pictures, even though they’ve been quite good, too. For 30 years now, Cruise has been subjecting himself—and no doubt an army of stuntmen—to some of the most outrageous stunt sequences since the days of Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd.

In this one, Ethan’s off on his own, mostly, with the rest of the team working separately.

We get a long (too long, really) underwater sequence, and a long (but not too long), tension-filled bi-plane chase, in which Ethan has to switch planes in mid-air, and then parachute out with only minutes before the nuclear missiles fly! And then, of course, there’s the running. Cruise runs a lot! It’s become an expected trope.

There are a couple of “Inside Baseball” bits, and some unexpected and clever ties to scenes in the earlier films. The cast is uniformly good, with Cruise once again bringing more depth to the role than it needs. Rhames is the heart of the team, and his character precipitates a lovely, if improbable, finale for the series.

Editing feels choppy at times and was occasionally confusing. I have to admit, though, I found Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning to be a massively fun popcorn movie, with “cartoon violence,” and a stalwart hero. When a three-hour flick is over and your first thought is you want more, you know that’s a good sign! (Actually, I think slicing a half hour or so out wouldn’t have hurt the picture one bit. Still!)

Since this was not a Marvel movie, there’s no in-credit or end-credit scene in the long scroll of credits, which is too bad. They could have had 30 seconds of Tom Cruise running away from the camera.

Extras include a number of featurettes.

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