‘Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning’ review: Franchise betrays its tone
The final Tom Cruise Mission: Impossible film is so preoccupied with ending on a meaningful note that it becomes gloomy and ponderous
“I need you to trust me.”
Though Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) asking people to place their trust in him has always been the implicit theme of the Mission: Impossible series, the first time it’s said in so many words is in the third film, to his wife. He says the same thing to his old friend and teammate Luther (Ving Rhames) in the sixth film. He uses the word five times in an effort to convince Grace (Hayley Atwell) in the seventh. And in Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, by all accounts the last film in the series, he says: “I need you to trust me… one last time.”
And because Tom Cruise hasn’t let us down yet, across seven films and 30 odd years, we do as he asks. We trust that the long exposition scenes will give way to the glorious frenetic activity these films are known for. We trust him through an inordinate number of goodbyes and till-we-meet-agains. We trust him even though the big set piece, a deep-sea dive in frozen waters, is claustrophobic and confusing. Most of all, we trust him to remember what made this a uniquely pleasurable series.
This is where the problem lies. It’s not that Cruise and Christopher McQuarrie, writer-director of entries 5 through 8, aren’t thinking of the earlier films. If anything, they’re thinking of them too much. The Final Reckoning begins with a sizzle reel of Hunt’s past missions, and flashbacks appear through the film. There are also multiple callbacks—CIA director Kitteridge (Henry Czerny) had already returned in Dead Reckoning; sad sack analyst Donloe (Rolf Saxon), him of the violently upset stomach, is back too; and both agent Jasper Briggs (Shea Whigham) and Admiral Neely (Hannah Waddingham) reveal associations with characters and events in previous films.
The thought of culmination hangs heavy over the film: “Every choice, every mission, has all led to this”. Mission films are always about the world ending in fire; this one offers global chaos as the best-case scenario, nuclear Armageddon as the worst. Yet, until now, this has never weighed them down. Instead, the more insane the doomsday scenario, the more cheerful the IMF team seems. One of the joys of the series is not having to pay any attention to whatever snake oil the plot is trying to sell—Apostles, Syndicate, Rabbit’s Foot. The whole point is to have Cruise running and hanging off things and saving or being saved by the various brown-haired women in his life.
After defying every single authority he’s encountered for three decades, Hunt is not only working with The Man here, he’s practically coordinating government operations. Since the events of Dead Reckoning, the mysterious rogue AI known as the Entity has hacked into the nuclear silos of several nations and set their missiles to fire in four days. The only hope of stopping it is the cruciform key in Hunt’s possession, which can unlock the source code of the Entity, somewhere in a sunken submarine under the frozen Bering Sea. Written out like this, it’s a pretty typical Mission plot. And yet, this one is not like the others.
The Final Reckoning betrays the franchise’s tone. Suddenly, everything’s very serious. Exposition that would be normally be done in a few crisp lines is expanded into long, painfully underlined speeches. Gone is the lighter-than-air feel of entries 4-6, the high point of the series. In its place is another Hollywood action film dragged down by its own self-importance. At its worst, it becomes the sort of dull, commonplace film this franchise has always resisted: where the US military shows restraint and flexibility and its leaders choose the greater good over national interest—a fantasy, just not the kind we’re used to.
It's a sad fact that Mission: Impossible developed its villain problem right at the end. The series always managed to find compelling antagonists… until Dead Reckoning. In theory, having Cruise, crusader for the theatrical experience, fight an evil AI makes sense. But the Entity never becomes an emotionally compelling adversary. We only see it communicate once in The Final Reckoning, through an inadvertently comic sound-and-light show. The threat it represents is dire and relevant, but the absence of something corporeal to root against, something with motives and weaknesses, is deflating. There’s a henchman problem too. Smirking assassin Gabriel returns as the Entity’s on-ground representative, now out of favour; Esai Morales’ performance is as charmless as the last film.
The occasion seems to get to everyone. Waddingham, Whigham, Angela Bassett, Nick Offerman and Holt McCallany are so painfully tense as assorted government and military types that it’s hard to believe this is the series that let Alec Baldwin play the fool for two films. Luther is ailing, Benji can at best muster a sad smile (though I’d have liked him to lift the moroseness, it’s been fascinating to see Simon Pegg’s tech guy, introduced as comic relief, deepen as a character). Atwell, introduced in the last film, has a light touch, but the film’s insistence upon Hunt’s deep connection with her is a rebuke to the memory of Rebecca Ferguson’s Ilsa.
Cruise is visibly moved by all the fuss, and rather moving as a result. He looks tired (someone even comments on it) and older than he ever has onscreen; you have to imagine it’s a deliberate choice on his and McQuarrie’s part. After the murk and gloom of the film’s long Arctic passage—Hunt underwater, Grace and Benji dealing with suspicious Russians—and one of several indifferently lit confrontations, the film sputters into blazing, brilliant life. Here, at last, is what we came for: Cruise racing through a field, legs like pistons, commandeering a biplane, doing ridiculously dangerous things with a sense of joy. It’s a perfect 20 minutes, a final breathtaking gift from this, the most buoyant of modern action franchises.