Directed by Christopher McQuarrie, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning follows Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and the IMF team after the events of Dead Reckoning in a race against time to find and destroy the rogue artificial intelligence known as the Entity in one final mission, one that if failed could mean the end of the world.
The Mission: Impossible series has come a long way, from its rough early beginnings to being one of the most iconic action film franchises in recent pop culture, having gradually improved over the years with nearly every installment since the third film. Even though I may not be a super fan of the series I do feel a majority of the series does have a lot of great effort put into it and mostly lives up to its iconic status. After several years of crazy stunts and thrilling spy adventures, we have reached the 8th and supposedly final installment of the Mission: Impossible series, appropriately titled “The Final Reckoning”, which also serves as the second part of the storyline that started in Dead Reckoning. Did this film live up to all of expectations set up by the previous installment and deliver a worthy conclusion to the storyline as well as to the nearly 30 year old iconic franchise? My personal answer would yes and no respectively.
This film does deliver a mostly solid and very thrilling conclusion to the Reckoning storyline after so much build up, but it doesn’t really feel like a grand finale for the series as whole, even with its somewhat overstretched attempts to connect back to nearly every film in the franchise. It’s an installment that feels like it was meant to be just a second part of a standalone mission but was forced to be the final mission at the last minute, which I found not only affects the film itself but affects my personal perspective of it.
It’s not a bad film or even a terrible one in the slightest but there were a number of things that held it back from how great it could have been in my eyes.
Let’s get into what worked and didn’t work in this film, starting with the cast and characters. Most of the cast does a great job with each of their performances and even when some of them have short roles they do end up standing out in ways I didn’t expect. However, similar, to the previous film, I also felt there were too many characters featured that I didn’t really care for or could have been cut out entirely as they didn’t always feel necessary to the story.
Tom Cruise delivers probably his most emotional performance as Ethan Hunt as we witness him be pushed to his mental and physical limits in this film as he risks so much to save the world, once again in a high-stakes mission. Despite everything he has been through and everything he has sacrificed he’s remained a determined individual unwilling to give up no matter the cost, cementing himself as one of the best action heroes ever to be on the big screen after almost 30 years.
Hayley Atwell reprises her role as Grace and once again proves to be a really fun and great addition to the Mission Impossible series with balanced moments of humor and drama delivered within her performance. While I still feel Rebecca Ferguson’s character should have still been here in this film paired with Ethan instead of Grace she at least proves herself to be a great partner to Ethan in this film compared to the last one.
Ving Rhames as Luther and Simon Pegg as Benji have always been an immense spark of heart in all of the Mission Impossible films they have been a part of and they continue to be the same here with their respective performances that give levity to a mostly mature story.
We do get two new additions to Ethan’s team with Pom Klementieff’s return as Paris and Greg Tarzan Davis’ return as Theo Degas from the previous film. I really liked Paris in this film, more than I did in the previous entry, as she actually got to be a fun character and not just a one-dimensional silent assassin, delivering awesome action scenes and great moments of her own kind of humor played wonderfully by Pom Klementieff.
Theo on the other hand was extremely forgettable and contributed pretty much nothing to the team for the entirety of the film, which made me question why he was even included in the first place despite a decent performance by Greg Tarzan Davis.
There is also another addition that joins Ethan’s team later in the film that is a surprising character return from the very first Mission Impossible that ended up being a surprisingly fun standout. In a film that makes a lot of attempts to connect back to previous installments in a forced manner this was one of the few natural feeling connections that made sense narratively, as well as proves to be a valuable asset to the team.
While the main villain is still considered to be the Entity we do get the return of the Entity’s liaison, Gabriel, reprised by Esai Morales who continues to make Ethan’s life a living hell, as well as be an absolute nuisance to both the heroes of this film and the audience watching this film. I’m sorry but this character absolutely sucks as a villain and is easily one of the worst villains to come out of a Mission Impossible film, with an over the top performance given by Esai Morales and cartoon villain levels of writing that has no place in this series. After having several grounded and great villains in this series Gabriel comes off as the least threatening of the line up and the worst kind of villain to end things off with, especially in what is meant to be the last installment of this series. The Entity felt far more threatening than him and it doesn’t even have a physical body!
Another duo of extremely annoying characters were Eugene Kittridge and Jasper Briggs, who, despite having better performances from their respective actors compared to Gabriel, just felt like unnecessary additions whose actions only drag the story to a halt numerous times throughout the film. Given the events that occurred in the last film you would expect these two to trust Ethan by now and help in some way, but instead they just keep being a thorn in his side and allowing the Entity more time to ruin the world.
This set of annoying characters thankfully gets balanced out with a set of awesome supporting characters who all get their own stand-out moments, with the two most notable of them performance-wise being Angela Bassett as Erika Sloane, the former CIA director from Fallout now President of the US, and Tramell Tillman as Captain Bledsoe, a submarine commander that Ethan meets with on mission.
The film’s narrative suffers from a rocky first act that feels messy and almost lost me until the second and third act kicked in and pulled me back with its high-tension thrills, action, and stakes that are easily going to be considered some of the best sequences of this year. The first act focuses a lot on making connections to past installments in the series that sometimes feel natural here and there but then other times feel completely unnecessary as if they were added last minute to make a mostly standalone story feel like the final chapter. There are even some retcons to some previous plot points in past films that this film randomly decides to drop in through gratuitous flashbacks that I felt were extremely dumb and poorly put together, resulting in uneven pacing for the film as a whole. Once it gets past the first act and these unnecessary additions things do end up evening out and I ended up having a really fun time with what was being delivered in such awesome capacity on screen.
Now I wasn’t completely on board with the AI storyline that started in Dead Reckoning since I personally felt it had no place in the grounded world of the Mission: Impossible series, and while I still feel the same way about the storyline in this film, I will admit there were some narrative elements involving the AI threat that I found to be extremely relevant to current events going on now regarding the increased usage of and its negative impacts. People may initially find the idea of AI cultists to be a ridiculous addition to this film’s story but to be completely honest it’s not far from the truth, given the rising number of AI enthusiasts and artists that have been popping up everywhere lately. These mindless toads that have been plaguing social media are represented quite accurately in this film and I can honestly appreciate this film calling those people out in its own way, given how much of a problem they have been recently.
Even the idea of AI manipulation of political information in this film is almost a spot-on depiction of the exact same kind of thing going on currently in the world but mostly in the US. Had the previous film and this one leaned more heavily into this grounded approach to AI in this series rather than the blatantly copied elements of the Terminator franchise that they both use then I would have liked this storyline a lot more as a whole.
While the characters and narrative elements are a mixed bag for me, the technical elements such as the action, editing, effects, sets, stunt work, cinematography, sound design, and music are all perfect as one would expect from this series by now. The action goes big and matches with the enormous stakes of the film, resulting in adrenaline-fueled tension that you can’t help but be super engaged in, especially for how well-crafted everything is on the big screen.
Easily the best sequences of the film are the submarine sequence and the plane sequence of the second act that had me on the very edge of my seat and were brought to life beautifully by insane practical effects and the daredevil antics of Tom Cruise performing his own stunt work. Even if the stories of each Mission: Impossible film are not to your liking you can’t deny the one thing that remained consistent with all these films is the action and technical elements that never fail to hook you in, thanks to such a dedicated team of filmmakers behind the camera who aren’t afraid to take crazy risks like the IMF team.
The music is done by composers Max Aruj and Alfie Godfrey and it certainly adds to the thrills of everything on screen but I won’t lie I do miss Lorne Balfe’s music from Dead Reckoning.
I personally feel the Reckoning storyline managed to end on a mostly solid note with this film but as a franchise ending I don’t feel this was the right film to end it on. The film has us saying goodbye to various characters here and there but it just didn’t feel like a proper ending for me, as it just felt like an ending of another insane mission until the next one. If this was really going to be the end of Mission: Impossible as a whole there are many other ways they could have ended things, and they could have done so with a story with a proper structure, a good villain, no unnecessary additions, and a more triumphant outing that goes even bigger than what they did here. Again I do not think this is a bad film by any means and I still recommend it, especially for the die-hard fans of this series but I was left wanting a lot more than what was given. I’m going to give Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning a B- = 83.
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