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In an alternate reality, Tom Cruise is Marvel's Iron Man and not Ethan Hunt, who leads his apparent last adventure in Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning. Thank God he instead saw the light and chose to continue the Mission: Impossible franchise, which has recently gotten better with every passing installment.
The Final Reckoning may be the craziest installment yet. Cruise has done countless stunts, but there are some insane sequences in the eighth movie. He and director Christopher McQuarrie may have put too much on their plate, but they still deliver the most gripping (albeit one that requires every ounce of suspension of disbelief) entry in the franchise.
You may be wondering, How much more can they do? After all, Cruise has scaled buildings — once breaking his ankle jumping between two — and hung from the side of planes. Somehow, they found a way to up the ante.
Take, for instance, the underwater scene that occurs about halfway through. It probably lasts about 20 minutes, and you will find yourself holding your breath with Cruise while sitting on the edge of your seat.
Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning review
Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning is not without its flaws. The Final Reckoning requires knowledge of past installments. While some of the nostalgia trips are done well, I stand by the theory that someone should still be able to enjoy any entry in a series without having done the homework.
Luckily, The Final Reckoning is filled with exposition and flashbacks to fill in the blanks. Is it genius or lazy? Your mileage will vary with these scenes.
Action movies still don't get much better than this. The Final Reckoning has everything you'd want out of a blockbuster: action, heart, and something to say.
Jokes may have been made about former President Joe Biden being “alarmed” by Dead Reckoning. It is a funny headline, but the threat of AI is ever-growing, and Cruise wants to nip it in the bud and raise awareness of it.
Some franchises have overstayed their welcome, but I would argue Mission: Impossible is finding its stride — it's eight solid movies in and not a complete miss to report.
What is Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning about?
It's clear Cruise cares about the movie's threat; as he kicks someone, he tells them they use the internet too much, anyway. The Entity — a powerful AI force — is once again center stage. It not only makes for a great popcorn bucket, but it is a realistic threat Hollywood faces.
Throughout the two-part Dead Reckoning and Final Reckoning movies, Cruise and McQuarrie show how bleak the future could be with AI. It's something even Ethan can't avoid using. When being confronted by bad guys, he asks them, “Are you sure it's really me?”
In The Final Reckoning, the world doesn't know how to differentiate what's real and fake. The spread of misinformation is at an all-time high, and it's up to Ethan Hunt to save the world once again.
Bringing the band back together
Ethan and the rest of the IMF team, including a mix of familiar faces like Luther (Ving Rhames) and Benji (Simon Pegg) with the new additions from Dead Reckoning such as Grace (Hayley Atwell) and Paris (Pom Klementieff), have to save the world from the Entity.
At the beginning of The Final Reckoning, Ethan is stuck between a rock and a hard place. IMF wants him to give up the key that he grabbed from Gabriel (Esai Morales) at the end of the last movie. Meanwhile, he wants to track Gabriel down and destroy the Entity, which is submerged hundreds of feet underwater somewhere in the world.
It's a risky move, as gaining the Entity's source code could have dire consequences. Destroying it could result in the end of cyberspace. The United States government, led by President Erika Sloane (Angela Bassett), is wrestling over what to do as well.
Admittedly, as awesome as The Final Reckoning is, it does a lot of sprinting in the first 20 minutes. Understandably, McQuarrie wants to get you back into the action, but first, he has to catch you up to speed with Ethan and the Entity.
That means it country hops like the beginning of one of Jason Statham's early-2000s B-movies. Once The Final Reckoning settles in, it doesn't look back.
Tom Cruise's high-octane stunts
The reason you go to see a Mission: Impossible movie in theaters is for Cruise's latest stunt, not the plot per se. He has done it all at this point, but somehow, he finds a way to top himself.
In The Final Reckoning, Cruise puts himself in a few compromising situations. The underwater sequence is one of the most tense scenes in recent memory. While he did not actually film this submerged hundreds of feet underwater, I'm inclined to believe he did film it underwater on a soundstage.
Unlike most action movies, The Final Reckoning lets the viewers simmer in the moment. It would have been easy to cut between the IMF team's adventures since they are split up. Instead, McQuarrie stays focused on one scene at a time, helping scenes like the one where Cruise is underwater build tension.
There is also the small airplane sequence that is shown in the trailers. Max Aruj and Alfie Godfrey, who take over for Lorne Balfe in scoring the film, do a wonderful job with their score. In that sequence, it is nowhere to be found, allowing the focus to be on Cruise and Morales.
The fact that you constantly wonder how they filmed things as practically as possible is enough to prove its power. Once again, McQuarrie makes a tactile movie with real stakes.
Even more impressive is that The Final Reckoning is reportedly one of the most expensive movies ever. Its budget ballooned towards $400 million, but unlike the similarly expensive Electric State, this looks the part.
Unlike what filmmakers like the Russo Brothers seem to believe, there are limitations to what can be done on a soundstage. Sometimes, you can't beat good old-fashioned practical effects.
Cruise's performance
Ethan Hunt is more Indiana Jones than ever. Cruise is a physical specimen — granted, I would not challenge him to a fight — but he's often undersized for his opponents (never more so than when he faced off with Henry Cavill).
I always liked that Daniel Craig's James Bond was never an intimidating force, and yet, he'd get the job done. Cruise has played Ethan similarly for years. Though he does have a scene so violent they don't show it on-screen early on that leaves Grace traumatized.
Whether he's sneaking onto a plane or punching people in the face, Cruise always knows how to portray the character. At this point, he's closer to Dom Torretto than Superman, but every punch he throws feels real.
Maybe that's why Ethan Hunt is one of the great movie protagonists. He's human, and Cruise often speaks for most people when he tries to preserve the state of moviegoing.
The rest of the IMF team
While Mission: Impossible is Cruise's franchise, the supporting players get their time to shine. Ving Rhames delivers his most heartfelt performance as Luther yet. He doesn't get a lot of screen time, but he does make the most of the time he does have.
It's a shame Hayley Atwell and Pom Klementieff only joined the franchise recently. Grace and Paris are two of the best characters the franchise has, and their journeys should have only just begun.
For Atwell, she has rarely received this much attention in her other projects. Even when she was Peggy Carter, she was too charismatic to delegate to such a supporting role. Agent Carter gave her the chance to lead a project, but Grace may become her signature role.
She does have good chemistry with Cruise, which helps. The women of Mission: Impossible can all kick ass, and Atwell gets her fair share of fights in The Final Reckoning.
The same could be said for Klementieff, who was regulated to a comic relief character in the MCU. Her feral performance in Dead Reckoning was one of the highlights, and she now joins IMF full-time.
She doesn't say much, but she always makes her presence known. I'd watch a spin-off with her and Greg Tarzan Davis, who plays Degas, Jasper Briggs' (Shea Whigham) former partner.
Unfortunately, Paris doesn't get any fight scenes as gritty as the alley one in Dead Reckoning. However, she does have a subtle homage to Alien in her first fight scene that is fitting given Klementieff's badassery.
Wrapping up the franchise
Whether or not The Final Reckoning is the last Mission: Impossible movie remains a mystery. It could go either way, especially if this makes a lot of money.
Regardless, it finds a way to wrap up the last seven of Ethan's adventures. There were callbacks to past movies in Dead Reckoning, but The Final Reckoning finds very subtle connections dating back to the first movie.
I'm not one for cheap nostalgia, but the Final Reckoning features unexpected deep cuts. It's not fan-service moments meant to garner standing ovations from the crowd. Instead, they serve the story and prove Ethan's actions have consequences.
Call it what you want — I'm inclined to believe the writers were stuck and needed an easy resolution. So, they decided on retconning various plot points (including the entire purpose of Mission: Impossible 3). In fairness, Dead Reckoning also inserted Gabriel into Ethan's past in a puzzling flashback. I wasn't a big fan of that, and I don't love every retcon here.
The biggest problem is making the first three Mission: Impossibles and Dead Reckoning required viewing before The Final Reckoning. I always believe you should be able to watch any movie in a series without your enjoyment being contingent on your knowledge of past installments. That theory is put to the test here.
I still think it works better than 90% of other franchises that strive for similar moments. If a certain character that died in The Final Reckoning returns in the next movie, I will walk back these comments. For now, I trust that Cruise will not completely undo everything.
Should you watch Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning?
The answer to whether or not you should see Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning is a resounding yes. I can't remember the last time my heart pounded like it did watching it.
It's flawed, sure, but these movies have surpassed the need for expectations for a tight plot. Cruise does blockbusters like no other. I'm not sure where else this franchise can go besides space (a dilemma the Fast & Furious franchise faced before F9), but I'm always down to see him try to take it up another notch.
AI can be a useful tool, but Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning proved nothing beats the human touch. By that standard, Tom Cruise must have God’s touch when it comes to filmmaking.
Grade: A-
Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning will be released on May 23.
