After countless masks, myriad self-destructing messages, multiple comrade deaths, and more awe-inspiring feats than any franchise in cinema history, Tom Cruise‘s Mission: Impossible goes out with one last bang—specifically, a show-stopping finale for the ages—with The Final Reckoning.
A 170-minute exercise in death-defying stunt work, elegiac hero worship, and endless exposition, Christopher McQuarrie’s supposed saga capper is a bloated semi-movie, frustratingly light on actual espionage and heavy on mournful nostalgia. Nonetheless, when it kicks into gear in its second half, it provides the over-the-top thrills that fans have come to expect, and which are guaranteed to leave their hearts in their throats.
Premiering at the Cannes Film Festival ahead of its May 23 theatrical bow, The Final Reckoning begins with an unholy information dump courtesy of President Erika Sloane (Angela Bassett), who in a dispatch to Cruise’s IMF super-agent Ethan Hunt lays out the perilous post-Dead Reckoning situation: the Entity, a “digital parasite” artificial intelligence, has taken over the world and, in the process, catastrophically shattered any clear-headed conception of the truth.
Worse, it intends to eradicate mankind by seizing control of the East and West’s nuclear arsenals in an attempt to wipe the Earth’s slate clean, leaving behind only itself and its few cult-y human acolytes. Civilization’s lone hope is, you guessed it, Ethan, whom the commander-in-chief says was “always the best of men in the worst of times” and an oft-doubted savior who “never let us down.”
This distended soliloquy is set to a stern Cruise close-up and a montage of clips from past Mission: Impossible films, and it concludes with the president begging Ethan to come to Washington to hand over a magical key that is the sole means of accessing the Entity’s source code—and thus defeating it.
The issue is, said code is at the bottom of the ocean in a Russian submarine whose whereabouts are unknown, and as is repeatedly hammered home, Ethan is not someone who plays by the rules. Predictably, he opts to do things his way, assembling a new crackerjack team comprised of trusty sidekick Benji (Simon Pegg), ace pickpocket Grace (Hayley Atwell), assassin Paris (Pom Klementieff), US intelligence agent Degas (Greg Tarzan Davis), and his old trusty tech whiz Luther (Ving Rhames), who’s now operating out of a subway tunnel HQ that, due to his failing health, doubles as his hospital room.
The Final Reckoning begins in herky-jerky fashion and maintains that erratic rhythm for much of its early going, during which Ethan and company attend a gala function to find arch nemesis Gabriel (Esai Morales), who was once the Entity’s favorite minion but, having been discarded by the AI, now wants to be its master.
To accomplish this, Gabriel steals from Luther a custom-designed “poison pill” that, when attached to the Entity’s source code, will kill it. Unfortunately, doing so will also destroy all of cyberspace, thus plunging the planet into perpetual primitive chaos. Faced with this scenario and options that are bad and worse, the president—surrounded by advisors played by Nick Offerman, Holt McCallany, Janet McTeer, and Charles Parnell—considers preemptively launching nukes against the countries who’ve lost control of their arsenals, the thinking being that this move will save at least some of America.
Amazingly, The Final Reckoning is far more convoluted than even this synopsis implies, and McQuarrie and Erik Jendresen’s screenplay doesn’t handle its twists and turns very gracefully, falling back on mouthfuls of overly portentous dialogue (dotted with three awkward uses of the word “reckoning”) to keep their story on its rails.
For extended stretches, talk about apocalyptic threats, impending disaster, and do-or-die gambits outweighs any suspenseful action that might convey those monumental stakes. A couple of fistfights are the extent of the proceedings’ initial adrenalized mayhem, and though one of them is punctuated by a humorous gag—in which McQuarrie’s camera sticks to Grace’s horrified face as she watches an off-screen Ethan slay adversaries—it’s not enough to generate the electricity this swan song demands.
Ethan’s plan to save the world is so far-fetched and requires such ultra-precise timing that it’s no surprise (and quite amusing) that more than one would-be accomplice reacts to news of his scheme with wide-eyed incredulity. Trying to keep his plot straight is a yeoman’s task that ultimately becomes irrelevant, as everything boils down to cutting wires before bomb timers tick down to zero, and Ethan performing deeds that are not just astonishing, but downright superhuman.
At this point, Cruise’s operative has fully evolved into an invincible Christ-like crusader (complete with fairy-tale resurrection) who’s always on the “right side” and never leaves a teammate behind. McQuarrie puts him through the paces, beginning in earnest with a lengthy dialogue-free sequence in the drowned submarine, where Ethan—wearing a cutting-edge diving suit—dodges falling torpedoes while trying to acquire, and then escape with, the Entity’s source code.
There’s plenty of chitchat throughout The Final Reckoning about whether everyone is charting their own course or merely following the Entity’s script. However, there’s no doubt that Ethan’s fate is triumph, thereby validating Grace’s belief that he alone is worthy of controlling the Entity and, with it, the world.
Still, the protagonist’s preordained victory doesn’t detract from the film’s climactic centerpiece, in which Ethan pursues Gabriel by grabbing onto a biplane and holding on for dear life as he tries to commandeer it and, later, board his rival’s airborne craft. Shot in stunning up-close-and-personal IMAX, it’s a stunt for the ages, with Cruise dangling by seatbelts and hanging upside-down by legs crossed around shaky wing supports. The A-lister’s standing as Hollywood’s all-time daredevil is inarguable, and here, he tops his prior feats, crafting a transcendent vision of cinematic derring-do.
The Final Reckoning bends over backwards creating narrative links between itself and previous Ethan adventures, yet such tethering plays as not only clumsy and corny but, in the end, unnecessary. There’s little relation between Brian DePalma’s first Mission: Impossible and this eighth installment, and there needn’t be, considering that Cruise has long since transformed the franchise into an elaborate celebration of his own peerless and divine strength, fortitude, and courage.
Through the series, he’s established himself as a genuine one-of-a-kind, and if this farewell isn’t quite up to par with some of his former outings—and isn’t a wholly convincing goodbye; room is left for a return—it’s proof that, when it comes to jaw-dropping risk-taking, no one does it better.
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