Mission Impossible – The Final Reckoning review: Pure, heart-racing entertainment
Tom Cruise returns for what may be his final outing as Ethan Hunt in this $400m spectacle of underwater stand-offs, mid-air duels and world-ending stakes.
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning
170 minutes
In cinemas
★★★★
If you like your epics epic and your spectaculars spectacular then Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is the movie for you. Ditto if you like your suspension of disbelief highly suspended. As Anthony Hopkins notes in his cameo role in the second instalment of this blockbuster espionage-action franchise, it’s not called Mission: Difficult.
This 170-minute eighth MI movie moves as fast as Tom Cruise, as Impossible Mission Force agent Ethan Hunt, runs in the brilliantly mandatory Tom Cruise Running Scenes. It also shows what a $US400m budget can buy and it’s money well spent.
There are two extended scenes that alone are worth the price of a ticket. One centres on Hunt underwater and a sunken Russian submarine. The other involves Hunt in a red biplane and the ever-smiling villain Gabriel (Esai Morales) in a yellow biplane.
Each are a credit to the director, Christopher McQuarrie, who co-wrote the script with Erik Jendresen, writer of the hit 2001 television series Band of Brothers, the cinematographer, Fraser Taggart, and the star and self-appointed stuntman Cruise.
It’s amazing to look at and pure, heart-racing entertainment from start to finish.
“You never followed orders and you never let us down,” the US President (Angela Bassett) tells Hunt in the pre-titles sequence. She’s right. The huge question, though, is will he survive this most impossible mission in what is said to be 62-year-old Cruise’s farewell to the role?
The action picks up from where the previous movie, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning (2023), also directed by McQuarrie, left off. A sentient artificial intelligence thinks human intelligence is a waste of space and wants to rule the world, even if that means wiping out every life form on it. It is known as The Entity. “It’s The Entity’s future or no future at all.”
Hunt and his crew are out to stop it. They include regulars Benji (Simon Pegg) Luther (Ving Rhames), ex-thief and vague love interest Grace (Hayley Atwell) and French-speaking assassin Paris (Pom Klementieff), whose favourite word is one for which we don’t need subtitles: mort.
In an algorithmic nutshell, The Entity has taken control of most of the nuclear arsenals of the nine nations with that civilisation-ending capability. It’s after the rest, especially the US’s, and the clock is ticking. Within four days The Entity will have it all. So Hunt and his team have 96 hours to – as we are reminded more than once – save the world.
There is a possible means to neutralise The Entity that involves that sunken sub and other gadgets in the possession of Hunt and Gabriel. The latter wants to use them to control The Enitity and therefore humankind. Hunt’s aims, interestingly, are more ambiguous.
That ambiguity goes to some of the intriguing questions posed. It’s possible, from a certain perspective, to see Hunt as the bad guy, now and from the beginning. The opening includes a terrific flashback sequence to the previous movies and Hunt’s earlier missions in which colleagues carked it.
It also applies to the President of the United States. If you are the last nation on earth with nukes, do you use them or lose them? The decision she has to make is confrontingly possible in the real world.
The script has its mawkish moments but in general it is intelligent and quick-witted. When Hunt asks a US submarine commander (a wonderful performance by Tramell Tillman, new to the franchise) to do something he replies. “Mister, if you want to poke the bear” then ups his periscope in an unexpected way.
Perhaps because of its length this film has lots of moments where the actors can act. Atwell’s Grace, watching a brutal fight that we don’t see, is a highlight. And towards the end Pegg delivers the best Benji scene yet.
Speaking of acting, let’s not forget Cruise. He’s perhaps the last great old-fashioned movie star. He’s also a fine actor, and in this movie he has the time to show it. He’s been thrice nominated for Oscars, as best actor in Born of the Fourth of July (1989) and Jerry Maguire (1996) and best supporting actor for Magnolia (1999). I think he should have won for Magnolia (it went to Michael Caine for The Cider House Rules).
When this movie ended I had two immediate thoughts. First, that it was massively entertaining. Second, that I would love to see Tom Cruise as the next James Bond. That perhaps is a mission impossible, but then that’s what they always say.
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