‘Mission: Impossible- The Final Reckoning’ is a step down, but when it’s good, it’s great
Tom Cruise’s likely final turn as Ethan Hunt is loaded with fan service, although it’s not nearly as good as the previous film.
The reckoning was dead. Now, it’s final.
Two years after delivering a seventh film in the franchise, Mission: Impossible- Dead Reckoning, which doubled as an all-time great action movie, Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt and friends have returned in what is implicitly the final film in the series, at least as we know it.
Directed once again by Christopher McQuarrie, The Final Reckoning is a bit more disjointed than its immediate predecessor, nor does it flow nearly as seamlessly. It’s loaded down with a great deal of callbacks and fan service, much more than this franchise has typically featured, and its ending isn’t nearly as satisfying as it probably should have been.
That said, The Final Reckoning has a couple of truly amazing sequences, most notably a long, wordless, nerve-wracking segment that has Cruise swimming through an abandoned submarine. The stakes are high as can be, literally the potential end of the world, and the possibility of a nuclear Holocaust. And like Cruise’s also-much-delayed Top Gun: Maverick, the plot consists of telling us about an elaborate, multi-faceted plan, and letting us watch it play out.
The Mission: Impossible film series, based on the 1960s TV show, has been going for nearly 30 years, always with Cruise in the lead role. Brian DePalma’s original film came out in the summer of 1996, a few weeks after I graduated from high school, and now I’m almost 47.
The first film killed off Cruise’s entire team at the beginning, eliminating the team dynamic of the old TV show and letting Ethan Hunt emerge as a James Bond-style solitary star, although over time, a team was added to the mix. The first five films all had different directors, although McQuarrie has been at the helm for the last four, starting with 2015’s Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation.
I consider 2011’s Ghost Protocol — the one directed by Brad Bird, where Cruise is climbing up the building in Dubai — the best of the series, although Dead Reckoning in 2023 was just a tick below. Featuring about a half-dozen jaw-dropping action sequences, one of which included a falling piano, Dead Reckoning featured Cruise, then about to turn 60, as a completely believable action hero. It helped, though, that the underwhelming Indiana Jones sequel had come out the week before, with a hero who was past 80.
That film featured an AI antagonist called The Entity, which was seeking to take over all of the world’s electricity and eventually its nuclear weapons. This conceit required all of the characters to switch back to analog equipment. The main human villain is Gabriel (Esai Morales), who is seeking to “control” The Entity.
It’s up to Ethan to try to turn the A.I. supervillain off, which requires diving into a Russian submarine, a multi-step process that requires the cooperation of several layers of the government and military bureaucracy, who are more cooperative with Hunt than you’d think they’d be, considering his history.
The sequence makes way for a handful of winning cameos, from Severance’s Tramell Tillman — who, in limited time, carries himself like a movie star — Ted Lasso’s Hannah Waddingham, and Love Lies Bleeding’s Katy O’Brien. There’s some strong stuff involving the president (Angela Bassett) and her national security cabinet (including Nick Offerman as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs), although it’s not nearly as fun as the chaotic meeting at the beginning of Dead Reckoning.
The whole submarine mission, which takes up the film’s middle third, is fantastic, but then the film essentially resets for the third act, which isn’t nearly as impressive, leading up to a final action sequence, involving planes, that feels a lot more like a showcase for Cruise to do impressive stunts than something that looks cool on screen. That’s not a spoiler, since it’s on every single poster of the film.
The film also introduces a fascinating idea — there’s a cult that worships The Entity and has infiltrated government agencies on its behalf, in the tradition of The Guilty Remnant from The Leftovers — and does not nearly enough with that.
The 2023 film had a sublime running gag where Shea Whigham’s CIA man was chasing Ethan for the entire movie and kept just missing him; he’s back, and given a surprising backstory. In fact, multiple things about the plot are retrofitted to reference the 1996 film, and other surprise faces pop up. There are also lots of touchstones of 1990s action cinema in general, like digital countdown clocks and the heroes having to disarm a bomb by snipping the right-colored wire at the right time.
The music is also strong, with the score credited to Max Aruj and Alfie Godfrey, with hints throughout of Lalo Schifrin’s theme from the TV show. And after I mentioned earlier this week that Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons” is all over movies and TV lately; it shows up here, too, in an early scene set at a ball.
As for Tom Cruise, he’s never not believable as an action star. He does a lot of running, and he’s shirtless more often than latter-day Cruise characters typically are. Yes, the now 62-year-old actor is looking noticably older than he did in Top Gun: Maverick three years ago, or even Dead Reckoning a year later. But his age isn’t, at any point, the problem here.
The ending opens the door for more of these movies, but if there are I imagine it won’t be for a while. Cruise is reportedly pivoting back to prestige, and yes, it’s time for him to do that.
I give Cruise, McQuarrie and their team credit for being perfectionists and going all out once again. But Dead Reckoning is unquestionably the better film.