“Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning” begins by saying thank you to the man who made it all possible – Tom Cruise.
“Without you, the world would be a very different place,” says President Erika Sloane (Angela Bassett) solemnly via tape recorder – the kind that kicks off almost every “Mission: Impossible” movie – as Ethan Hunt (Cruise) looks on, a keen sense of duty written all over his face. Clips (literally, so many clips) play from previous “Mission: Impossible” movies, reminding us of all that Tom Cruise – ahem, sorry, Ethan Hunt – has done over the years: how many bombs he has defused, how many lives he has saved, how many stunts he has almost died performing.
Tom Cruise is one of our most important movie stars, and also one of our most improbable – and not just because he is still somehow alive after spending a career doing things like driving motorcycles off of cliffs. Despite a significant rough patch in the 2000s/early 2010s, despite the Scientology of it all, despite all the couch jumping in the world – he has managed to stay relevant and position himself as the savior of movies. And, if I’m being honest, it truly feels like he is sometimes!
“Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning” leans into Cruise’s importance, not just to the franchise, but to our overall culture. The movie serves as both a goodbye and a thank you, a remembrance of sorts for all the great movie moments Cruise has wrought over the years with this franchise. That nostalgia oversteps at times, particularly in the film’s first hour, which is a strange and tedious mix of exposition and moments from previous films (seriously, so many clips!). But, in true Tom Cruise fashion, when “The Final Reckoning” locks in, it locks in with a vengeance, and the film’s latter half delivers some of its best action moments to date.
“The Final Reckoning” is a direct sequel to “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning,” which left Ethan and his team trying to figure out how to beat the Entity, an artificial intelligence intent on destroying the world. To control the Entity, Ethan must retrieve its source code, which – of course – is stuck in a Russian submarine at the bottom of the ocean.
I don’t know about you, but I hear the words “Mission: Impossible” and “submarine,” and I start buzzing with anticipation. But it takes “The Final Reckoning” about an hour and a ton of exposition to get to said submarine – or any big stunt, for that matter.
Despite the focus on stunts, one thing the “Mission: Impossible” franchise does quite well is efficient set up. In “Ghost Protocol,” you see one shot of Paula Patton pining over a dying Josh Holloway, throw in a few sporadic lines about her feelings for him in the run up to her confrontation with his murderer, and it’s all the more satisfying and delightful when she kicks Léa Seydoux out of a window – easy peasy! But in a strange move, “The Final Reckoning” trades in efficiency for leisure. Yet, despite how slowly the first hour moves, the pacing still feels weirdly quick. There’s no emotional setup between the characters – that’s all been done in previous films – so instead they become exposition machines, moving rotely from scene to scene. It’s stilted in ways these movies rarely are.
I am a die hard “Mission: Impossible” fan – I will often forgive the worst of this franchise – but as that first hour wore on, I started to have the sinking feeling that Cruise and director Christopher McQuarrie were beefing this. But, I am also susceptible to good damage control. And while the latter half of this movie doesn’t completely make up for the first hour, it certainly helps.
When “The Final Reckoning” stops telling us that Tom Cruise is worthy of our thanks and starts instead showing us that he is, it feels like a light switches on as we get back to our regularly scheduled meta action movie extravaganza. These movies often function as movies about filmmaking – see “Dead Reckoning,” which is about how AI could never make a movie better than Tom Cruise could – and “The Final Reckoning” is no exception.
When Ethan asks the president for an aircraft carrier and the Secretary of Defense (Holt McCallany) scoffs at the fact that she would even consider accepting that request, it feels like a knock at the budget discussions that most certainly surrounded this movie. By the time Tramell Tillman shows up as a swaggering submarine captain, Katy O’Brian and her biceps start taking center stage, and Cruise engages in hand-to-hand combat while mostly naked, you start to think: “We are so back!”
McCallany, Tillman, and O’Brian are part of a great group of character actors who add a much-needed dose of levity to “The Final Reckoning,” which is a far cry more somber than the franchise’s other entries – I too would like to thank Tom Cruise for his service, but it can get a little self serious at times.
But the one thing “Mission: Impossible” can never take too seriously is its stunts, and “The Final Reckoning” features two of the franchise’s best – action feats that make you feel true shock and awe. So, maybe the ostensible final entry into the Ethan Hunt saga doesn’t hit the comprehensive heights of some of the others in the franchise. But at least it leaves you going out on an absolute bang.