Alex Moss EditorIf rumours, and that daunting title, are to be believed Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning will be the closing chapter in the Mission Impossible saga. And so a franchise that has lasted eight films, grossed over $4.1 billion at the global box office while never needing a reboot and retaining the same star for the entire duration is coming to an end. Ethan Hunt and his IMF Team have lit the touch paper but will they go out with a bang or a whimper?
Picking up a few months after the close of Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning (the Part 1 got dropped) Ethan (Tom Cruise) finds himself on the run from pretty much every agency on the planet, a number of bad guys and the AI villain known as The Entity. Teaming up with his usual cohorts of Luther (Ving Rhames), Benji (Simon Pegg) and latest recruit, Grace (Haley Atwell), Ethan must find all manner of Macguffins, including previous villain Gabriel (Esai Morales) to stop The Entity from wiping all of humanity out.
There is a clear intention early on in Final Reckoning to remind you of everything that has gone before. The first twenty or so minutes acts as almost a highlight reel of all the previous films. In some ways this works, it reminds you of the long journey Ethan and co have been on and certainly helps raise the stakes. In fact, by the end of all this lip-service to the previous films does generate an emotional punch that Cruise brilliantly conveys through his stoic yet always near the edge performance.
Where it slightly struggles is in trying to tie so much of what has gone before into this story. So newer characters are revealed to have been related to characters from the first film, MacGuffins from earlier films suddenly play a key role. It’s all well and good but it does feel like a lot of superfluous plot. It slightly feels as if Final Reckoning is trying to be a legacy sequel when all we wanted was a sequel or closing crescendo.
However, what much of this plotting does is give us a sense of theme previously lacking in the Mission films. Ethan has always been a man who believed in destiny but here is forced to reconcile the fact that perhaps fate has a hand to play. In one particularly powerful subplot he apologises to a character for what happened to him as a result of Ethan’s actions in a previous film only for the character to tell him it was the best thing that ever happened to him. It is these little moments in Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning that lift the spirits much more than expected from an action film of this ilk.
By the time the action truly kicks-in most of the plot is just about in place that you’re unlikely to care anyway. Because when that action hits the gas, when the rousing score goes up a notch you are firmly strapped in and ready for the rollercoaster that has become synonymous with Mission Impossible. And boy, does it deliver. There are two staggering standout set pieces, one aboard a sunken submarine teetering on the edge of a precipice that feels like James Cameron’s The Abyss dialled up to eleven, the other the climatic Cruise hanging from an biplane. The latter will have your mouth aghast at what Cruise has done to deliver this for us. There was a time on terrestrial TV where a show would deep dive into the best of Hollywood stunts, these days it would simply be one Cruise moment after another, you could likely commit a whole show just to this aerial action extravaganza. It is utterly mesmerising and once again proof that there is an incredible form of artistry that goes into the execution of these stunts that should be recognised by award ceremonies.
But perhaps what Final Reckoning does better than any previous Mission Impossible film to date is juggle these action moments. Because while Ethan is hanging from the wing of a plane, we’ve got the other members of the gange defusing a bomb, while still others are trying to keep a teammate alive and still hack into a supercomputer. It’s the sort of thing that is incredibly hard to get right but here every beat lands and every tick of a clock feels earned and armrest breakingly tense. It is to director Christopher McQuarrie and editor Eddie Hamilton’s huge praise that not once are you struggling with the geography or cause of any action on screen. All the while you feel the adrenaline hitting from the action you might not be seeing in that moment knowing full well you’re about to be thrown from one tidal wave to another without a chance to draw breath.
The cast are all solid in their roles with Simon Pegg and Pom Klementieff bringing just a smidge of comic relief and chemistry to allow you small moments of levity to draw breath. There are moments when Klementieff’s Paris looks so cool you wonder if you couldn’t build a whole film around her alone as a gun for hire a la John Wick. But, this is a Tom Cruise movie. The biggest film star on the planet, a man so dedicated to the idea of cinema he is willing to risk his life to bring us something truly worthy of the format, is still the beating heart of the franchise. His Ethan has rarely changed from film to film, that is part of the appeal. This man who, like the star himself, will put everything on the line to get results. What makes Ethan so engaging to watch is the way there are so many emotions always bubbling below the surface, his face the equivalent of a swan, calm on the surface while furiously paddling just out of sight, always calculating, always figuring out his next move. That Cruise is often able to convey so much of this without changing expression is masterful.
If this is the end, if the fuse on the IMF team has finally been extinguished then Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning is a rousing, affectionate farewell come love letter to the franchise. A big, proper cinematic experience that asks you to sit forward, put your hands in the air and simply lose your breath as you plummet from lofty heights at the sheer audacity of the spectacle on screen. This is pure cinematic entertainment and a fine example of why the medium needs to live on and long. Take a bow Mr. Cruise, you’ve done it again.
Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning is in UK cinemas now.
