(if you want to read my review of the Dead Reckoning Part One click here)
Alright, I’m a clearly biased and unabashed Mission: Impossible fan. I’ve been seeing these films since I saw the first one in 1996 in the theater and then two more times that same summer. I’ve been riding with Tom Cruise‘s Ethan Hunt for the full thirty-year span, and I don’t care how crazy they get regarding plot and if they make any sense. I watched the show in reruns as a child and the TV reboot before the film franchise started, and honestly, it was always a bit out there in believability.
Over time, though, as these films went on, it seems Cruise used them to put his ideas of filmmaking and cinema on celluloid. With each film ratcheting up the scale of dangers and stunts, it felt like as Cruise got older, he decided to do more and more crazier stunts, just as Jackie Chan has been slowing down as he has gotten older.
I like to pair Cruise with Chan, as if you know both of their career, some of the stunts Jackie was doing in the 1980s and into the 1990s were awe-inspiring and made you think he was insane as you watch the blooper reel at the end of his films. I don’t know if seeing Jackie hang from a helicopter back in Police Story III: Supercop in 1995 inspired Cruise as time went on. Still, he’s now part of the legacy of stars who do insane stunts for the pure enjoyment of the audience in the theater, seeing something they’ve never seen before in a story.
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning follows the events of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One in which Cruise’s Ethan Hunt along with Ving Rhames‘ Luther Stickell and Simon Pegg‘s Benji Dunn are on the hunt to find Gabriel, played by Esai Morales and stop The Entity – an artificial intelligence who wants to take over and destroy the world. In contrast, the world’s leaders want to take control of it. If this sounds familiar, the basic plot is, what if Ethan Hunt had to stop Skynet from doing Judgment Day?
The new core member of the team and Cruise’s on-screen romantic interest of sorts is still Hayley Atwell as Grace – the thief turned IMF agent that will follow Ethan to the ends of the earth, even though they just met. They also add Pom Klementieff as Paris, Gabriel’s former heavy, who has now switched sides after betrayal, and Ethan spares her life. Paris only speaks French, which is utterly silly, and works because of Pom’s super sincere and serious performance. Her character is cool looking bad ass and she’s perfect at it.
The team also ends up with Greg Tarzan Davis‘ Degas, one of the US Agents hunting down Ethan and his team for no reason that makes sense in either movie, other than to add more tension. His performance works as he ends up being the most expressive member of our hero team, yet capable as the other main fighter with Paris.
The structure of this film isn’t the most clear, as most of the film takes time to have a lot of flashbacks, either to the last film from two years ago, I guess, for people who might see this without watching that, and many scenes throughout the seven films before this one. Even more than the last one, this film tries and doesn’t successfully try to make all the Mission: Impossible films have a sort of narrative to why Ethan Hunt is so important and how he connects to The Entity. I’m fine with it. I can make it work with my excellently trained Marvel Comics No Prize powers, but I could sometimes see and hear how this wasn’t working with the audience around me.
Yet the film is so fast paced especially for a film that is two hours and fourty-five minutes long your brain doesn’t have much time to focus on that part as we see Cruise constantly running and I stand by my the more Tom Cruise runs the more fire the movie is going to be and man this is a good action movie. The film is just set piece to set piece with some exposition to get the team from point to point and check off goals.
This film is essentially set as a large act three, much like how people like those Avengers movies work in the MCU. You really don’t need much story or plot; it’s all paid off here. Things ramp up with each scene. The Fight choreography is done very well, with each character having clear traits on how they fight and the camera placed at an angle or distance that allows you to see everything clearly and where everyone is in the setting.
The editing throughout also makes things clear to follow. It’s in the editing that this film does some amazing things. At a point in the film, when the team and Ethan are separated, they edit the two different fight scenes in a way that makes them feel like one fight scene and have the actions of one scene push forward the other. I think many will look over or forget this, but it is extremely hard to do and something that isn’t seen in many films. To think about it, I think I’ve only seen something like this done in action animation.
The stunts, the real selling point of this film, are spectacular. From hanging from a biplane to diving into a crashed submarine, each spectacular feat looks incredible on the screen, as you can see humans doing these things. Final Reckoning pushed further than the last movie, whose biggest stunts were motorcycle jumping off a cliff into a train and also copying the opening setpiece from Uncharted 2 (the video game) with the falling train.
Here, there seems to be a new big stunt or fight every 20 minutes or so. The film never gives you time to really rest, as you’re just as driven to see what Ethan and the team have to do next, just as they are doing it. The film also sprinkles in the right amount of slapstick humor to give you a nice cathartic release from the stakes. The film has high stakes, even if you don’t totally believe them, the story and characters do, which makes the overall film work.
Cruise’s performance, as I’ve talked about, is not coasting, but his Ethan is a version of him at this point. We’re here to see Cruise run, jump, and do these feats while giving a nice smile at the end of it. Atwell is charming as she always is on film, and for me, these two films are just a constant reminder that she should be a bigger star, and Marvel dropped the ball on not using her as much as they should’ve. There are almost too many star cameos as characters that can be distracting, but a few, like Tramell Tillman as Captain Bledsoe and Katy O’Brien as Kodiak, were a ton of fun, even with such a small time on screen.
You’ll see some familiar faces if you loved Top Gun: Maverick. Esai Morales is having the most fun as one of the best scenery-chewing, world-threatening bad guys, and he almost feels he is a Bond villain crossing over. He feels way more comfortable in this one than in the last film. Shea Whigham‘s Jasper Briggs feels a bit boring here with his role as hunting down Ethan Hunt, even though he’s saving the world on direct orders of the President of the United States.
Speaking of that, Angela Bassett returning as Erika Stone, now the POTUS, works best for MI fans the most, does a fine job as the stressed leader of the free world, and, as always, gives the right amount of heft to the role. I haven’t talked about Christopher McQuarrie much in this, and other than Cruise, it’s their shared viewpoint on filmmaking and the franchise, as he’s at this point co-written and directed half of the film, that adds a familiar level of consistency. It’s why no matter how absurd the film can feel, it works for the Mission: Impossible universe they’ve made.
We’ve seen the IMF teams led by Hunt overcome greater and greater odds with crazier and crazier feats on screen that seem more effortless to do than big CG Superhero spectacles. If this is the end of Ethan Hunt’s run as the main character and Cruise leaving the franchise, then I feel Mission: Impossible The Final Reckoning was a great ending adventure. I can’t wait to add it to my MI collection and look forward to what comes next, even if I don’t believe this is the last time we’ll see Tom Cruise save the world in some crazy life-daring stunt. I gotta have hope, I haven’t seen him run to outer space yet!
Score: B+