Is Mission: Impossible-The Final Reckoning truly the end for Tom Cruise’s three-decade-long action franchise? It’s tough to buy into it being the last run at saving the world for Ethan Hunt. When Mission: Impossible-Dead Reckoning Part I underwhelmed at the box office, Paramount changed the title of both movies so it was no longer a two-parter, but instead the end of the line. I’ll confess that, even having seen the movie now and all of its connective tissue to previous chapters, returning characters, and end-of-the-world scenarios, it’s still up in the air. But if it is over, The Final Reckoning goes out with a massive “Thank You” to everyone who has been on this impossible mission since the beginning.
It makes sense, really. Tom Cruise, the last real movie star; the guy who cheerleads for the theatrical experience and for fans to experience movies in all of their glory, delivers a real crowd-pleasing finale with The Final Reckoning. At 62 years old, and looking every bit of 42, Cruise is still putting his body on the line with insane stuntwork that actors half his age wouldn’t dare. The stuff he pulls off in this movie are ridiculously insane, and could only have been dreamt up by the fevered brains of Cruise and his pal, director Christopher McQuarrie. I won’t pretend I’m the biggest Cruise fan ever (I know who that person is!), but it’s hard not to appreciate what he does for his craft, his fans, and for this long-running project that has been part of his life for thirty years.
The Final Reckoning picks up a couple of months after the previous movie, and the AI program known as The Entity has thrown the world powers into chaos. With nuclear war on the horizon and the likely end to all of humanity, our government once again turns to Ethan Hunt and his IMF team to save the day. Nothing shocking here, it’s the plot we expected and showed up to see. But there’s an interesting approach that is different for the franchise, taking an alternative view on Ethan Hunt the hero.
What The Final Reckoning does is illustrate, sometimes to a frustratingly repetitive degree, how Hunt’s world-saving efforts actually led to the creation of The Entity and put the world on the edge of destruction. To do that, the film leans heavily into the canon of the first three movies, the choices Hunt has made, the people he’s lost, the relationships he’s destroyed, and most importantly the many McGuffins he’s snatched from the hands of evildoers. All of it has led to this, Hunt’s final reckoning, when he must fix a problem he may have inadvertently created.
This approach changes the dynamic considerably, with Hunt carrying a lot more guilt, and thus demanding more of himself and his team. It’s perfect for a finale to put this much pressure on Hunt, because it allows for the story to bask in self-tribute and sentimentality. And boy, is there a lot of it. Barely five minutes can go by without a heavy dose of emotional drama, with Max Aruj and Alfie Godfrey score swelling constantly as Hunt and his team stare wide-eyed, drowned out by the magnitude of the moment. It’s kind of corny the way Cruise and McQuarrie lionize these movies, and to be fair it can bring any momentum to a halt. The same goes for the insane amounts of exposition, most of it sci-fi techie mumbo jumbo, that can grind the story to a halt. But at the same time, you can’t help but feel the love that Cruise and McQuarrie have for Mission: Impossible. They love what they’re doing, they love getting into the nitty gritty details, and while it can drag things a bit, the payoff is eventually worth it.
While not on par with Dead Reckoning for sheer amounts of action, The Final Reckoning has some sequences that are just jaw-dropping. The film spends a great deal of time underwater and in submarines, allowing for Cruise to spend a nerve-racking amount of time trapped within the hull of a destroyed sub with little hope of escape. If you’re claustrophobic (as I can be, also with a fear of deep water), this scene will drive you batty with tension.
Cruise has done more than his share of death-defying stunts but I don’t know if any of it compares to a mid-air battle with the villainous Gabriel (Esai Morales), climbing from plane to plane thousands of feet in the air and at hundreds of miles per hour. Of course, we know Cruise is up there doing this crazy shit himself which only makes it more of a nail-biter to watch. Like him or not, Cruise puts everything on the line to entertain, and The Final Reckoning has some of the wildest action ever brought to the big screen. It absolutely demands to be seen in the biggest and best theater you can find. The final 45 minutes are simply amazing, edge-of-the-seat stuff.
Mission: Impossible wouldn’t be anything without its supporting cast, though. Cruise is The Man, naturally, but by now we’ve all come to love his brothers (and sisters) in arms. We see crucial developments for Luther Stickel (Ving Rhames) and Benji (Dunn Simon Pegg), who have been fighting the good fight for so long. Former thief Grace (Hayley Atwell) solidifies her role on the team, while Hunt cobbles together a ragtag squad around them with the French assassin Paris (Pom Klementieff) and Agent Theo Degas (Greg Tarzan Davis, buddies with Cruise since Top Gun: Maverick). And like I said before, there are some surprising returnees, as well, who draw attention to Hunt’s evolution and the loyalty he has earned. Similar to Dead Reckoning, the stakes are higher, and not everyone we love is going to come out of this one unscathed. I’ll confess that Rebecca Ferguson’s Ilsa Faust is sorely missed. Not having her puts the burden of carrying the physical aspects solely on Cruise when she could help carry the load. Faust was Hunt’s equal in a lot of ways, and not having her is a loss.
Mission: Impossible-The Final Reckoning has a lot of familiar elements taken from other nuclear war thrillers, and that’s fine. At just under three hours in length, it’s also a huge time investment and sometimes you can feel those minutes passing by slowly. But nobody has made action movies with the level of commitment and grandiose scale as Cruise, and chances are it won’t happen again for a very long time, if ever. If this is truly the end, Cruise has built something special with Mission: Impossible that he can be proud of, and that fans can be happy they went on this roller coaster with.
Mission: Impossible-The Final Reckoning opens on May 23rd.
