Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning Review: Tom Cruise Does the Impossible One Last Time
Is this the last outing for Ethan Hunt?
What’s the first thing you think about when you think about Tom Cruise? Is it his magnetic star power? Or is it his controversial Scientology beliefs? Perhaps it’s even that time that he jumped on Oprah’s couch. There is one attribute that rings just as loud for Cruise– he’s a showman. The presumably last entry in the Mission: Impossible franchise, The Final Reckoning, is exactly the kind of movie I imagine Cruise himself loves seeing in theaters. Its exposition is heavy on plot and nostalgia before moving all that aside to begin the action extravaganza. Perhaps the biggest problem is that this final Mission: Impossible chapter is too in love with its protagonist and legacy. Thankfully, director Christopher McQuarrie and Cruise realize why we are there in the first place– to see Cruise hang from a plane.
Final Reckoning assumes that you didn’t see the last entry. Paramount made an epic miscalculation and launched Dead Reckoning the week before the one-two punch of Barbie and Oppenheimer, making one of the weaker entries in the franchise swallowed up by a once-in-a-lifetime cinematic event. That means most of the prologue is dedicated to recapping the events of Dead Reckoning, namely that there is an evil AI known simply as The Entity planning a nuclear war to destroy humanity. Ethan Hunt (Cruise) obtained the key needed to defeat this rogue AI, but now he must locate the submarine that holds the source code and rid the world of this threat.
It’s usually a bad sign when I’m looking at my watch when the opening credits start (about 25 minutes into the movie). This elongated intro sequence grinds any momentum to a halt and threatens the entire film. Presumably, if you’re walking into the theater to see the eighth entry in a series, you have some idea of who Ethan Hunt is. Cruise has molded Hunt into a sort of messiah like being, the only person capable of stopping nuclear destruction. Not only does Final Reckoning have multiple montages recapping the many feats Hunt has accomplished throughout this franchise, but it also explains MacGuffins that appeared in movies some 20 years ago! In one fashion, it acts as an appropriate bookend to the series; on another, it comes across as mythologizing an action hero.
Hunt is joined once again by his teammates, Luther (Ving Rhames), Benji (Simon Pegg), as well as newcomers Grace (Hayley Atwell), Degas (Greg Tarzan Davis), and Paris (Pom Klementieff). There are plenty of other familiar faces like the villain Gabriel (Esai Morales) and Kittridge (Henry Czerny) that make this one of the biggest casts in Mission: Impossible history. That’s not even mentioning the appearances from Hannah Waddingham and Tramell Tillman, actors who have graced the TV shows Ted Lasso and Severance.
Since the fourth entry in the Mission: Impossible series, Ghost Protocol, the franchise has been about one thing: what kind of outrageous stunt is Cruise going to pull off this time? Whether he was climbing the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, going to great lengths to improve his lung capacity for underwater stunts, or even flying his helicopter in a chase sequence, Cruise is at the forefront of stunts in blockbuster filmmaking. That’s the number one reason why journalists everywhere were laughing at the Academy Awards' inclusion of a Stunt category– Cruise and his Mission: Impossible team should certainly be honored in some fashion.
That’s why Final Reckoning doesn’t get going until Cruise hits the water. Where many movies that feature lengthy underwater sequences lose momentum, Final Reckoning excels. It’s a sequence the audience has been promised since Dead Reckoning repeatedly shows us where the source code lives– we know that Cruise is eventually going to go deep underwater to get there, and this is the final payoff. The other massive stunt comes within the final minutes of the movie, where Cruise does some more unbelievable aerial stunts. It’s right up there with the finale of Fallout, my other favorite action sequence in the franchise.
A big part of the success of Mission: Impossible is whether or not you believe Cruise is capable of doing his stunts. While there are many MANY videos that show Cruise practicing and preparing for these action sequences, you have to let that belief come in. If you come into Final Reckoning for an incredible story, you’ve made the wrong move. If you want to see Tom Cruise jump out of a plane for presumably the last time, strap in, Final Reckoning doesn’t disappoint. [B]
Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning opens in theaters on May 23rd.
New Podcast on Sci-Fi / Horror is now available on YouTube. Journalist Deirdre Crimmins joins us to discuss The Thing, Alien, and many more.