Tom Cruise has been playing Ethan Hunt for 30 years; let that sink in.
Sure, he’s taken on close to 20 non-Mission: Impossible roles since the first film in 1996, but for some reason he keeps coming back to Hunt, perhaps because it gives him the most opportunities to play on set (even if being Hunt didn’t exactly a expand his abilities as an actor—but don’t tell Cruise that).
Still, with the M:I movies, there’s not a mythology and a history that can be re-examined in these newer films, giving the writers (in this case, Erik Jendresen and director Christopher McQuarrie) a chance to create a through-line among seven films, bring back long-forgotten characters, and remember all of the chaos hunt created in those 30 years. All of it forces us to wonder why the hell the government would keep calling him back again and again to save the world.
Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning picks things up right where Dead Reckoning left off. The threat posed by the AI known as The Entity is now more focused: it plans to take over the nuclear arsenals of the world’s superpowers one at a time and launch all the missiles aimed at each other, thus eliminating the greatest threat to the world—humanity. It’s basically idea behind Avengers: Age of Ultron, but there’s no face or voice to aim one’s aggression toward, which is probably closer to reality but not as interesting cinematically.
As we saw in the last film, the Entity has a mouthpiece in Gabriel (Esai Morales), a former associate of Ethan’s turned villain. We now know that even Gabriel isn’t as powerful or scary as we thought he was in the previous movie, making him a terrible villain (especially compared to some of the far superior ones this franchise has seen over the years). This doesn’t kill the film—far from it. But without giving us a villain to focus on (and perhaps even secretly love), the film feels lacking in this one key area, which is underscored because the rest of Final Reckoning is so strong.
Hunt still has his usual team, with a few new members. Ving Rhames and Simon Pegg as Luther and Benji, respectively, are the mainstays, while newly acquired assets like Hayley Atwell’s master thief Grace, Pom Klementieff’s deadly Paris, and Greg Tarzan Davis’ Degas, a resent defect from being Briggs’ (Shea Whigham) former partner, provide ample support and add a youthful variety to the IMF team.
Final Reckoning has no shortage of new supporting players, popping in for an important sequence or two, and then vanishing. Surrounding the current president (Angela Bassett) are the likes of Janet McTeer, Holt McCallany (playing essentially the same character he’s been playing since Mindhunters), and even Nick Offerman as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. We also get Hannah Waddingham as an aircraft carrier commander, Tramell Tillman as a submarine captain, Katy O’Brian as an expert diver on the same sub, Henry Czerny is back as IMF chief Kittridge, and there’s even a returning character who I’m guessing no one will see coming and ends up being one of the best surprises in the film.
The point being, the film is top heavy with terrific performers, which is helpful since the plot is dense and the details sometimes cumbersome. But let’s also be honest, the details of these film hardly ever matter that much. The best part is the action and stunts, most of which are still handled by Cruise himself. Still, one of the finest moments in the film involves dialogue, when Ethan is arrested by the authorities, brought into custody, and put before President Sloane and her Joint Chiefs. During this interrogation, they walk us through Ethan’s list of accomplishments/path of destruction over three decades and end up realizing that as much as they want to take him out of circulation, they still need him. It’s a funny and endearing moment that acts as both a jumping-off point and a victory lap for the franchise.
But there is also a bit of action, including an impressive, beautifully shot underwater sequence in which Hunt must recover a hard-drive from a sunken submarine while it’s rolling down a ledge, aimed at a cliff. He battles increasing air pressure, freezing water, constant motion, and gravity, and it’s exhilarating. Nothing quite works as well as putting Cruise on the outside of a plane, and in Final Reckoning, there’s a biplane chase in which the flying is the least impressive part of the sequence. And you can’t deny that seeing his face clearly as the guy in/on that plane and knowing it isn’t faked in any way makes the Mission: Impossible films the gold standard of action movies.
It’s almost impossible to wrap one’s brain around the idea that Christopher McQuarrie has only directed six films and five of them starred Tom Cruise, and four of them were M:I entries (he also had a hand in writing four additional films starring Cruise that he didn’t direct). McQuarrie has a strong sense of not just what makes a scene look good, but also knows how to give any moment heft and importance. I joked earlier about Cruise not really pushing himself as an actor in these movies, but he’s still very much Acting and making all of what Hunt is going through seem relentlessly personal. He’s not an overly macho hero type, trying to be dispassionate about his work or the stakes; this guys is invested and emotional, especially about those he works closest to. He uses that emotion as fuel rather than lettin it distract him, and it’s what makes Ethan Hunt fairly unique in the action field.
The film is far from flawless. There’s too much exposition; it’s nearly three-hour running time is probably 15 or 20 minutes too long; and at times, things get convoluted and crowded. But Final Reckoning has earned its excesses honestly. And outside of its lack of a truly threatening villain (which is no small thing), I found this film as breathtaking as the best of them in the franchise.
The film is now playing in theaters.
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