Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning
Despite its occasional muscle-flexing and bombast, Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning ends (?) this once-mighty series with a whimper.
Systematically sapped of joy over the past decade by star/producer Tom Cruise and co-writer/director/Cruise enabler Christopher McQuarrie, the formerly fun and entertaining saga has replaced those laudable qualities with self-important myth-making, all in the name of ego trips for its stunt-obsessed star.
And yet for its first 90 minutes, The Final Reckoning seems terrified of attempting a single action set piece. Sure, there are a few brief fight sequences in this opening half, and Cruise’s Ethan Hunt gets to run real fast in that silly Cruise style that people love/hate/love-to-hate. But where are the Bond-esque gadgets and giddy spy games that got this series’ first five films — including John Woo’s embarrassing M:I - 2 — off to a rollicking start?
Part of the answer is that McQuarrie and fellow screenwriter Erik Jendresen wrote themselves into an overly serious box in last year’s Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One and can’t find room for much levity when the world is in peril. Not that dangerous global threats have kept the series’ pre-McQuarrie filmmakers (and McQuarrie himself in his stellar series debut, Rogue Nation) from having some laughs. But for whatever reason, the current regime has decided that such shenanigans are verboten when would-be messiah Ethan is literally the only person on the planet capable of saving it from doom.
A bunch of those long-gone good times fly by in an early Greatest Hits montage that reminds viewers what the series once was. It’s also the last shred of respect that the filmmakers show the audience as they resort to a staggering amount of flashbacks (including a ton from the still very fresh Dead Reckoning Part One), exposition, and characters thinking out loud to mind-numbingly spell out what every goddamn little detail means. Truly, if you’re feeling smart and want to get knocked down a peg or two, this is the movie for you.
As Ethan and his team attempt to stop the powerful AI known as The Entity from gaining control of the world’s nuclear arsenal and obliterating the planet, so much clunky, insulting dialogue is uttered that one wonders if ChatGPT ironically deserves a screenwriting credit. As with the previous installment, the scribes employ a comically unnatural, quilt-style speech approach in which characters are briefed on complex topics by multiple people, each of whom offer a pithy quip, followed quickly by another character doing the same, until upwards of eight people have delivered an unnaturally coordinated group performance as if they’re a vaudeville act.
Meanwhile, foe-turned-friend Paris (Pom Klementieff) spouts fortune-cookie aphorisms in French that everyone seems to understand. And though some of our most beloved character actors compose the cabinet of Pres. Sloane (Angela Bassett) — seriously: Nick Offerman, Janet McTeer (Ozark), Holt McCallany (Mindhunter), Charles Parnell (Top Gun: Maverick), and Mark Gatiss (Sherlock) — and a pair of fan favorites (Ted Lasso’s Hannah Waddingham and Severance’s Tramell Tillman) from two extremely popular AppleTV+ series pop up as Naval officers, only Tillman escapes with a shred of dignity.
The whole overlong, self-congratulatory thing is a thinly veiled excuse for Cruise to see what it’s like to embark upon a rescue mission inside a sunken nuclear submarine that’s not-so-slowly rolling into the abyss, then latch onto a biplane and maneuver around its struts high above the ground while extreme winds blast his hair back until he resembles Moe from The Three Stooges.
Despite the year’s best unintentionally hilarious line — “Torpedo tube!” — and featuring yet another aviation chase two films after Fallout, these massively ambitious sequences are a thrill to experience. And yet, the threadbare supporting material and its incessant self-congratulatory, faux-messianic tone are so glaring that it’s tough to call The Final Reckoning anything close to a complete, well-thought-out movie.
As with every Cruise film since American Made (the last time he did anything that can honestly be called “acting”), it’s merely a showcase of his daredevil whims. And the sooner he abandons these self-serving endeavors, the better.
Grade: C. Rated PG-13. Now playing at AMC River Hills 10, Carolina Cinemark, and Regal Biltmore Grande.
(Photo: Paramount Pictures)
