by Cain Noble-Davies
Worth: $14.50
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Tom Cruise, Hayley Atwell, Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, Pom Klementieff, Esai Morales, Holt McCallany, Henry Czerny, Janet McTeer, Hannah Waddington, Nick Offerman
Intro:
… at least an hour too long, and saddled with a script as sharp as a raindrop; but even at its most incredulously stupid, it’s still quite fun.
After three decades of increasingly ludicrous but bombastically entertaining films, we have now reached what is touted as the final leg of the Mission: Impossible film series.
What began as just another ‘90s update of an older TV show, has become iconic in the larger history of mainstream action films, and it has seen Tom Cruise evolve from his early success in the ‘90s, to his lampooned pariah status in the 2000s, to being heralded as a modern-day vanguard for the continued existence of physical cinema. Dead Reckoning and its AI antagonist was in the perfect place to symbolise the entire industry in 2023, and with its follow-up, that thematic lane is continued… into especially bizarre territory.
Where the more recent handful of M:I features managed to justify their potentially-indulgent run times, The Last Reckoning ends up nudging three hours while carrying a considerable amount of trimmable fat. There are points where it’s warranted, like the tying-in of storylines and characters from previous films, but between the exposition, recaps of either past movies or scenes from not even five minutes earlier, and attempts at hyping up its own later developments that come across as a bit desperate, there’s a decent amount of dead air to be found.
Which is unfortunate because, once the rollercoaster ride slows down and the audience is left to think about the what and why of the plot, the script shreds quicker than a vertical stabilizer under fire.
Dead Reckoning had issues around trying to be much cleverer than it could pull off, but The Final Reckoning doesn’t even seem to be trying. It gets to the point where the moments that have been hinted at both early on here and in the previous film, like the connection between Ethan and Gabriel, or the mystery woman whose death started this whole journey, are just sped past in favour of reiterating that AI bad, must stop nuclear Armageddon. And this is without delving into the weirder additions here, like whatever happened to Luther between films, the expansion of the Entity’s cult (?), and even the Entity as a possible stand-in for the idea of Scientology in a potential Disneyesque display of capitalising on cinematic self-flagellation.
These films have been allowed a sense of humour about themselves since the lore deconstructions in M:I:III, but this pushes right past that into Fast & Furious sequel material. They want so badly to repeat “family” in the dialogue, it’s kind of hilarious.
It’s a good thing, then, that Christopher McQuarrie still knows how to stage jawdropping action set pieces. When he and Cruise focus on the real meat, the former’s impeccable taste for tension-building combines with the latter’s death-defying to make the narrative lulls worth dealing with. From the Top Gun-esque homoerotica peppered through the extended submarine sequence, to the dizzying dogfight, to yet more ticking clocks that don’t even bother matching up to actual chronology, it’s clear that every drop of the film’s colossal budget has been squeezed for all its worth. It may not be an all-out breath-stealer like Fallout, but it shoots for the same stars and, at its peak, gets respectably close.
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is at least an hour too long, and saddled with a script as sharp as a raindrop; but even at its most incredulously stupid, it’s still quite fun. The performances are all solid (especially Pom Klementieff continuing to excel as the personification of a brick on a gas pedal), the action scenes are immense and immersive in all the right ways, and while Fallout arguably did better as a cumulative sequel experience, it still makes for a fitting end to a series that has had a love affair with the ludicrously convoluted since its very beginning. McQuarrie and Cruise set out to make a film worth seeing on the big screen, and even with its faults, they can consider that mission accomplished.
