Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning is action packed, and quite ridiculous
As Tom Cruise's muscular action franchise reaches its ostensible conclusion – although let's face it: if this one does well, they'll totally come back – it's worth taking stock of the journey taken to get here.
The first Mission Impossible (1996) was partly born out of the '90s trend for cinematic adaptations of fondly recalled 1960s TV shows (see also: The Fugitive,The Addams Family and The Flintstones) and partly born out of a desire to compete with Bond, and I reckon the M:I movies have been more consistently impressive than the modern 007 outings. This franchise rules.
Representing Tom Cruise's first big play as a producer, he originally conceived each entry utilising a different director known for a strong visual identity with Brian De Palma's trademark paranoia and camera tricks enhancing the first movie and Hong Kong action specialist John Woo bringing his balletic leanings to the Sydney-set Mission: Impossible 2 (2000). Although I remain an ardent defender of this orange-hued melodrama, M:I 2 was poorly received and is generally considered the franchise's nadir.
So the series lay dormant for six years before Cruise brought in J.J. Abrams (then best known for TV shows Lost and Alias) to direct Mission: Impossible III (2006), which established a new format that the franchise carried forward.
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Animation director Brad Bird (The Incredibles) made his live action debut with Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011), but the key development here was Cruise calling upon Christopher McQuarrie (who won an Oscar for writing The Usual Suspects) to solve some story issues. Cruise was obviously very happy with McQuarrie's work, as he would go on to write and direct Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (2015) and Mission: Impossible – Fallout (2018), with that last one (which was partially shot in New Zealand) being hailed as the series highpoint.
The unbridled success of Fallout gave McQuarrie and Cruise the caché to announce a two part finale to the series. But 2023's Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One was perceived as something of a let down, both critically and commercially, so they changed the subtitle of the follow-up to The Final Reckoning.
The first thing to note is that this is a considerable step-up from Dead Reckoning – Part One, which felt – ironically, considering Cruise's escalating emphasis on performing his own stunts – overly infused with CGI (computer generated imagery) and a little too removed from reality. Or at least the version of reality that exists in these movies.
Cruise has said he and the production team spent months preparing for the Burj Khalifa climb in Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol.
IMDb
Make no mistake, The Final Reckoning is highly ridiculous, and some of the exposition lines wouldn't be out of place in an Austin Powers movie, but the action scenes here (there are two major set-pieces) have a weighty tangibility that was relatively absent from the prior entry.
As in that film, the antagonist here is an artificial intelligence known as The Entity, and like all cinematic AI, it has determined that humans are a pest (despite a widespread cult that worships it), and plans to wipe out the species with nuclear force unless we cede total control to it.
For extremely convoluted reasons that takes the first third of the almost three-hour film to explain, only one man can stop The Entity, and it's Cruise's Ethan Hunt, who remains on the outs with his employers. Does this guy ever stay in the good graces of his bosses?
As ludicrous as The Entity is, it wouldn't have been out of place in the original TV show (1966-73), which often casually veered into science fiction. Indeed, McQuarrie deserves credit for how often he channels the peculiar specificities of the original (remarkably austere) show, which his predecessors seemed far less interested in.
Also, considering how humanity is currently at the mercy of algorithmic systems that incentivise our worst impulses, The Entity is an appealing metaphor for online discourse in general.
Tom Cruise, left, and US film director / screenwriter Christopher Mcquarrie arrive at the Cannes Film Festival for the screening of the film Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning.
AFP / Miguel Medina
As befits a franchise culmination (and a reported US$300-400 million price tag, but that includes Covid issues) the scale of the storytelling has never been larger, and while that makes it often difficult to take seriously, having Tom Cruise, The Last Movie Star, at the centre of it justifies plenty. As polarising as he is, he remains an exception to many rules of cinema, and I am here for it.
There are plenty of callbacks to previous films, and they don't seem as wedged-in as this sort of thing often does. One character from the first movie has a particularly marvellous return.
But this is Cruise's show through and through, and although it feels like a monument to his greatness at times, you couldn't ever accuse him of not accomplishing his mission. I choose to accept it.
