Leading into one of the best scenes in “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning,” Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt turns a wheel in character on a submarine and the aspect ratio of the film expands from widescreen to fill the Imax screen. It’s a wonderfully clever beat. After all, Tom Cruise is credited with saving the movie-going experience with “Top Gun: Maverick,” so it makes sense that even in character he’s controlling the image around him. Sadly, it’s one of the few clever beats in “Final Reckoning,” a movie that forgets so much of what makes this franchise memorable in an unwieldy and truly clunky first hour that plays like the longest “Previously On” you’ve ever seen. Repetitive and pretentious to the point of parody, it’s the worst hour in the entire franchise. That the film recovers as much as it does might be the most impressive mission that Ethan Hunt has ever proven possible.
To be fair, if anyone has earned valorization in the action franchise sphere, it’s Hunt. And so the first act serves not only to remind people of where we left these characters in 2023’s “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning” but to underline the importance of this character in the last three decades of genre filmmaking. Director Christopher McQuarrie, who co-wrote with Erik Jendresen, treats “Final Reckoning” like the “Endgame” of this series from the very beginning, recapping not only the last film but all seven previous outings, turning Hunt into a mythical figure more than ever before. Ethan Hunt is the guy who gets the job done, the one who chooses to accept the assignment, and the mythologizing right from jump in “Final Reckoning” feels a bit overcooked. Even if we all agree that Hunt/Cruise have earned this victory lap, did they have to take 12 of them? The “M:I” films have so commonly opened with a bang from blowing up the Kremlin to even the fun infiltration of the last chapter that it’s truly impactful to not have that sense of a runaway train building steam to start this one. It’s stuck at the station for an incredibly long time.
As it’s waiting to get going, Hunt is in hiding, brought back in by President Sloane (a wonderful Angela Bassett, giving the film gravitas instead of just pretention) to stop the impending doom that is “The Entity,” a rogue A.I. that now threatens the entire world with nuclear annihilation. All of the players from the last film are back, including Hunt’s allies Luther (Ving Rhames), Benji (Simon Pegg), and Grace (Hayley Atwell), joined this time by Paris (Pom Klementieff, so excellent in the moments she’s given to shine that one wishes she could pick up the Hunt mantle and continue the series) and, quickly enough, Degas (Greg Tarzan Davis). Esai Morales resurfaces as the villain Gabriel, a human stand-in for the A.I. villain of the “Reckoning” films, and a cadre of familiar faces pop up to fret over whether or not Ethan will save the day, including Janet McTeer, Holt McCallany, and Nick Offerman. Proving the reach of Apple TV’s original programming hits, “Ted Lasso”’s Hannah Waddingham works in an effective supporting role as an admiral on an aircraft carrier and “Severance”’s Trammell Tillman is fantastic in a fun part as a submarine commander.
It’s a big cast (and I haven’t even mentioned a few familiar faces that shouldn’t be spoiled) for what is essentially a narratively simple movie, especially at 170 minutes. Ethan Hunt and his Mystery Machine of allies need to stop Gabriel and “The Entity” from destroying mankind. The relatively shallow plotting allows for McQuarrie and Jendresen to fill in with two things: way too much planning and, eventually, some truly spectacular action sequences. Although, I would argue that the previous films had a much stronger sense of humor that could count as a third thing, missing from this entry. One of the joys of this series has been a sort of “can you believe we’re doing this” aesthetic as they pushed the last movie star to greater extremes just to satisfy a ticket-buying audience. In between dropping Tom Cruise out of planes and hurling him off cliffs, there was a cheeky wink to the audience: We know this is ridiculous, you know this is ridiculous, but just make sure to keep your hands inside the car as the rollercoaster picks up speed while we put your favorite star in mortal jeopardy. By taking itself so seriously, “Final Reckoning” loses the cheeky ingredient in the recipe. It’s less fun, and that’s truly disappointing for a series that has given us some of the most fun in action history.
Of course, McQuarrie and Cruise aren’t going to fumble the ball once the action gameplan in in motion. Without spoiling, the two best extended sequences here take place deep underwater and high in the air–it’s as if Cruise and his team of brilliant stunt choreographers ran out of ideas on dry land. Especially in Imax, the action in “Final Reckoning” can be truly breathtaking, a hybrid of Ian Fleming and Buster Keaton, action choreography that somehow frames its hero as the bravest man on earth and also sometimes just the stubbornest. When Hunt is climbing around an airborne plane, you can feel the gravity pulling him to earth and the wind pushing against him. It’s enough to ignore everything wrong with the movie up to that point, and, especially in an era of rampantly soulless CGI, I wouldn’t begrudge anyone for dismissing the valleys of this movie just to embrace the undeniable peaks.
It would be easier for me, an unabashedly huge fan of the franchise on this very site, to do the same if it weren’t so easy to see how those valleys were formed and how easily they could have been avoided. It’s clear that Cruise and McQuarrie came into this project with a desire to make the “biggest” film in the franchise—the runtime and franchise-recapping reflect that—and it’s also worth noting that it was once called “Dead Reckoning – Part Two,” and so that aggressive self-seriousness that drains the first hour of this film can be partially blamed on it really being the middle hour of a five-hour experience. However, all of that throat-clearing and philosophizing actually makes “Final Reckoning” feel less confident, not more. We don’t need to be told how important Tom Cruise is to movie-going to enjoy his final mission. After all, he turns the wheel.
This review was filed from the Cannes Film Festival. It opens worldwide on May 23rd.
