Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning, a Retrospective Hunt for Closure
When Tom Cruise first picked up the mantle of Ethan Hunt in 1996, it was already inevitable that the character would be inseparable from the actor. He’d already been a cemented Hollywood star for over a decade, and he was in the middle of wild run working with a gauntlet of notable directors. In addition to Mission: Impossible’s Brian De Palma, he’d worked with Sydney Pollack, Rob Reiner, Martin Scorsese, and Oliver Stone. He’d soon go on to work with Paul Thomas Anderson, Stanley Kubrick, Cameron Crowe, and eventually Steven Spielberg and Michael Mann. Whatever one’s opinion on Cruise’s onscreen or offscreen personae, the work he’s done in the last four decades has had undeniable significance in movies.
So it shouldn’t be such a surprise that we now watch his recent films as Tom Cruise stories as much as stories about his characters. Whether Cruise is Hunt or Pete “Maverick” Mitchell or subverting his action image in Edge of Tomorrow, it’s difficult to perceive Cruise entirely as those characters, more so than for our engagement with most actors. Over the back half of the Mission: Impossible franchise, the excitement for the next installment has been driven largely by the lengths that Cruise goes to for stunts. Hanging on to the sides of planes (large or small!), dangling from skyscrapers, acrobatic parachute jumps, etc. We revel in seeing how close to death Cruise will come long before we see Hunt’s narrow escapes. But it couldn’t last forever. Cruise knows it, Christopher McQuarrie knows it, and we know it.
That brings us to Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning, the purported closing installment of the series. There was a time when the endurance of the franchise was almost surprising, rotating directors in uneven installments, but with time the surprise has faded and Mission: Impossible stands as perhaps our greatest action franchise, notable for stunts that are as physical (as in, not all CGI) as they are bonkers. It’s also notable for how rigidly the series eschews lore and fan service. That latter distinction, however, began to change in McQuarrie’s previous movie, Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning, where it was revealed that the villain Gabriel (Esai Morales) played a fateful role in the very first mission from De Palma’s film. If that retconning felt pointless and ham-fisted, well—brace yourself for more of that.
The Final Reckoning picks up where Dead Reckoning left off, with much of the world’s systems and economies in the grasp of the Entity, an evil artificial intelligence determined to conquer humanity. Societies and world leaders are kowtowing to the omnipresent algorithm, and it’s gradually amassing access to global nuclear arsenals. The world is running out of time. The worse news for Hunt and his team (Simon Pegg’s Benji, Ving Rhames’ Luther, and Haley Atwell’s Grace all return, joined by Pom Klementieff’s Paris and Greg Davis’ Degas) is that the Entity predicts every move they make, checkmating Hunt and forcing him to play right into its hand. It wants the source code—trapped in a sunken Russian submarine in the Arctic; Gabriel wants the “poison pill” that Luther has created.
It’s as straightforward as any of the other certain perils from the series—that is, it’s entirely byzantine, but really the point is to globetrot and see what crazy events arise, so let’s not worry too much about diagramming the plan. A classic Mission: Impossible setup, but McQuarrie imposes so much unnecessary, mythologizing weight onto the film that it obstructs the sheer pleasure. The movie kicks off with immediate hagiography as the president (Angela Bassett) lauds Hunt for saving the world so many times, with images of the previous films flashing across the screen. It’s not the only time flashbacks will occur, either; McQuarrie keeps drawing from that well long after it’s dry. Not only is it superfluous (world shattering threats are par for the course for Hunt), but it cuts against what has made the Mission: Impossible series refreshing as so many others (e.g., James Bond) have fallen prey to intertwining everything into unwieldy lore. (The only amusing touch is that certain revelations add a “I brought you into this world, and I can take you out of it” energy to the proceedings.)
In addition to acting as a recap for the previous thirty years, The Final Reckoning suffers from a glut of other navel gazing habits. Ethan Hunt has always been a character marked by immediate action, even and especially when everyone around him thinks he’s crazy. Yet in The Final Reckoning, much of the first hour is dedicated to having every character encourage Hunt, insisting that he’s doing the right thing, that he’s “on the right side.” When has Hunt ever had doubt that needed alleviating? When has he ever needed his ego soothed? It’s repetitive and dull, and it seems to misunderstand this character, despite this being McQuarrie’s fourth Mission: Impossible film. The odd, stilted choices carry through to the film’s structure, as well. The editing in the opening half hour is weirdly frantic, making this at times feel rushed (even at close to three hours). And the dialogue, which has never been the point of the series, except to a degree in the original, is frankly grating. Urgent popcorn discussions have always been an element of these films and Hunt’s team rushes to solve problems, but it seems like no character is allowed to say more than a single sentence at a time. Instead, every thought has to be spread across three or four characters who often aren’t even in the same location. Once or twice, and the technique could be amusing, but it’s the only mode of discourse in the entire script. Less intrusive—though no less strange—is the suddenly passive nature of the Entity. In Dead Reckoning Gabriel was merely a top henchman, with the Entity actively thwarting Hunt’s actions. It was an interesting dynamic that complicated how the IMF engaged its enemy. But now the Entity is little beyond another macguffin that sits there in the background. Characters talk about it doing this or that, but rarely is it the antagonist.
There are enough problems so persistently present to drop The Final Reckoning to the lowest tier of Mission: Impossible entries. Yet when it finally gets to the action, it’s obvious why we came back to it all these times. The set pieces (the primary ones involving a submarine and biplanes) are jaw dropping. This crew is accomplishing some of the best action work in decades, not only finding ingenious dangers to challenge Hunt, but staging and framing it in thrilling ways. The biplane sequence in particular is a source of giddy delight, especially knowing that it’s theoretically Hunt’s last occasion to save the day. There are other good, minor sequences along the way, such as a multilocation fight scene rife with clever match cuts. No one is doing action work of this skill, magnitude, and finesse, and it will always be a delight to watch.
The action is unimpeachable, but you have to slog through so much dead weight to get there. Of course to put it another way: no matter how boring most of The Final Reckoning feels, the set pieces will jolt you awake and electrify you for a long time. It once again captures what has become the calling card of the Mission: Impossible series, even while it trips over itself. I’ll always be a bigger fan of the Burj Khalifa climb or the Vienna Opera House set piece, but I also might find myself rewatching this one just to see those red and yellow biplanes looping through the skies.
