Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning

Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning
Starring Tom Cruise, Hayley Atwell, Simon Pegg, Angela Bassett
Directed by Christopher McQuarrie

The "Mission: Impossible" film franchise managed to do something impossible: turn an iconic television series that ran from 1966-1973 into an almost thirty-year film franchise that's earned over $4.3 billion dollars between eight films. The movies center on Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt, an Impossible Missions Force agent who often goes rogue in search of powerful villains and even more powerful MacGuffins, but he always gets results - even though his own country has disavowed him. The movies are best known for showcasing Tom Cruise's insane stunt performances, as he's well-known for doing his own stunts. From motorcycling off a huge mountain cliff to attaching himself to a flying plane to scaling the Burj Khalifa, there's no dangerous stunt he won't partake in. Perhaps that's why "The Final Reckoning" is the last in the franchise: he just doesn't have it in him anymore, or at least his age is starting to catch up with him. In any event, "The Final Reckoning" does serve as a fond farewell to the franchise that ties everything up, even though it might be a bit too long, way too expositional, and treats Hunt like the second coming of Tony Stark. 

Having foiled Gabriel's (Esai Morales) plot to control an A.I. known as "The Entity," Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his team - consisting of Benji (Simon Pegg), Luther (Ving Rhames) and Grace (Hayley Atwell) - have gone into hiding as they try to find the elusive villain, only to discover that "The Entity" plans to bring about global destruction by launching all the world's nuclear weapons - and Gabriel wants to control it. Ethan and his team go on a global hunt to track down Gabriel, find "The Entity," and do what it takes to stop it for good.

The premise of this movie is painstakingly simple but long-suffering in its delivery, offering almost three hours of extremely decent action sequences that are unfortunately surrounded by literal truckloads of exposition that highlights Ethan Hunt's entire career (including flashbacks to all previous seven films), and a grandiose sendoff to Hunt's character that turns him more superhero than man. In a way, it was useful because I hadn't planned on re-watching all seven films beforehand, and they offered visual aids that made me remember, "oh, that's where that happened," and helped drive the story forward, but the exposition was still paragraphs of dialogue that droned on and on. Ultimately, it's about a rogue A.I. that will unleash World War III unless Ethan and company can do the...impossible...and stop it.

That's not to say the movie isn't fun, as we are gifted with numerous action sequences that highlight Cruise's commitment to not just Ethan Hunt, but cinema as a whole. Be it submerging himself in frozen water or hanging on for dear life on biplanes, there's no denying the appeal of the "Mission: Impossible" franchise - the action. Sadly, it's saddled by so much dialogue and cliches (such as an American government that's itching to hit the button to unleash their nukes before other countries do) that the beats in-between fall short.

Thankfully, director Christopher McQuarrie and cinematographer Fraser Taggert relieve the boredom by including multiple different camera angles during the dialogue that makes even a discussion about furniture seem death-defying. For the runtime, I never found myself bored to the point of tears, just wishing it had cut at least an hour of dialogue that wasn't needed because it was stuff we already knew, but for some reason they had to explain it again and again.

Most action films have what cinephiles call a "ticking clock" where our heroes are given an amount of time to complete a task before disaster, and "The Final Reckoning" is no different - but does so in an obvious manner. It's even on the board in the war room, a digital clock counting down to doomsday. This adds the needed excitement to the movie in that Hunt has a small window of time to get done what needs to be done, and although we all know the ultimate outcome, it doesn't deter from the excitement and pulse-pounding suspense (and also surprisingly shows that no one is really safe). Cruise has played this role since 1996, and you can tell the commitment he has to the part here, giving Hunt and company a fond sendoff even if it's a bit overly expositional.

The Score: A