Review by Tim Robins
MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD
YOUR MISSION: See the film before you read this review. Honestly! You have been warned!
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning begins with an overabundance of exposition and ends with two breathtaking set pieces that demand you see this film in the cinema.
The film is the final part of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, released in 2023, although flashbacks suggest seeds were planted in the very first Mission: Impossible movie – a form of retconning familiar to anyone who has watched Final Destination: Bloodlines. The more a narrator, then dialogue, then flashbacks tried to set up what’s going on, the more I tuned out. As the opening of David Lynch’s Dune (1984) demonstrated, telling a complex backstory over and over again at the outset doesn’t make it any easier to understand.
However, by the time agent Tom Cruise, aka Ethan Hunt, dives into Arctic waters to recover hardware from a submarine teetering on the edge of an abyss; then goes on to jump from bi-plane to bi-plane, in a mid air punch-up above South Africa, I promise that you’ll be clinging to the edge of your seat – and left wondering how long you can wait to see the film again.
For all its 2.40 hrs, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning leaves you wanting more. I would have liked to have learnt more about the cult of AI worshippers who we see mysteriously picketing the National Gallery (perhaps in support of AI art?). And there’s only a few scenes given to a twist that sees the return of Eugene Kittridge, the former director of the IMF in the first film and the director of the CIA in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, accompanied by the son of Jim Phelps. Gasp!
A clever, if tortuous, script sees Hunt attempting to thwart the sentient software known only as ‘The Entity’ that is gradually taking over the weapons systems of the world’s nuclear powers. Hunt must reunite the ‘rabbit’s foot’ hard drive containing the Entity’s source code with a device containing a computer virus,mand force the AI to escape into an elaborate USB where it will be trapped in a virtual reality. I think.
If all this sounds like science fiction, that’s because it is. In fact, it is very like the premise of the Terminator universe, but with humans instead of robots. There’s even a nuclear missile launch scene that is much like one seen in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. What is missing is any explanation as to why the AI wants to wipe out humanity – I guess it’s just what AIs do when they get too big for their boots. A scene in which Hunt’s team try to disarm a nuclear bomb while besieged by different factions brought to mind the climactic shoot out in Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970).
The events we care about involve the team Hunt makes as he goes along. Suffice to say, much of the previous gang’s all here: Simon Pegg reprises his role as Benji Dunn who has become an unexpectedly serious player in Team Hunt, and Ving Rhames returns as the hospital bed ridden Luther Stickell, still recklessly hanging the cruciform,‘Poison Pill’ malware around his neck.
Greg Tarzan Davies joins Cruise from the cast of Top Gun: Maverick, and brings with him an intensity that ratchets up the tension. Hayley Atwell is quick-witted as Grace, putting her blink-and-you missed-it pickpocketing skills to use in capturing the AI. Pom Klementieff returns as Paris, freed to fight again in the film’s only mask-off moment.
My favourite team member was one William Donloe (Rolph Saxon) who, you probably won’t remember, was the computer analyst who finds Hunt’s knife sticking out of a secured console in the first MI movie. I certainly didn’t remember him, but there was a handy flashback to jog my memory. Donloe has made a new life for himself after being bundled off to Alaska.
As it happens, the embarrassing knife incident was a positive turning point in Donloe’s life. We find that he has spent the last decades married to an Inuit woman, Tapeesa (Lucy Tulugarjuk, an executive director for the Nunavut Independent Television Network).
There isn’t a single team member who isn’t pulling their weight or given their moment in the sun. I particularly enjoyed the requisite group of worrying officials watching from afar as the Entity works its evil way from computer system to computer system.
Angela Bassett makes you wish that her character, Erika Sloane, former Director of the CIA in the MI universe, actually was the President of the United States. Mark Gattiss plays Angstrom, the stubbled careworn Head of the NSA, his face shining with perspiration as doomsday approaches.
Some of the film’s cast are visibly turning to wrinklies, a refreshingly mature contrast to the teen victims in Final Destination: Bloodline. The final reckoning of the title is clearly with time itself, not, as I first considered, performers’ hairlines.
Cruise wears a wig in a few scenes for continuity reasons. The reason scarcely matters because his hair style is appalling from the outset. One character opines that long hair suits Hunt. It does not. And it draws attention to Hunt’s puffy face. Suprisingly, more naturalistic, day shoots actually do Cruise a lot more favours than hiding him in the shadows.
Cruise may look swollen rather than ‘swole’, but he is still a good-looking guy, although his running now resembles a gardening dad chasing after a lurcher that’s broken free from its lead on an otherwise sedate, afternoon walk in the country. Older age comes to us all, particularly if, like me, you’ve followed the Mission: Impossible franchise since its origins on TV in the 1960s. That said, I’m no kind of action hero, either on or off screen, and never have been.
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning cost between $300-400 million, apparently making it the most expensive film ever made. The money is certainly up there on the screen. (Note to the makers of Captain America: Brave New World – this is how much it takes to effectively dramatise a naval conflict between nations, and a better script).
The film misses one opportunity. Having been told that the AI will become trapped in a virtual reality, it might have been fun to have scenes from that reality. We could have been led to think the plan to grab the USB containing the entity in ‘a blink of an eye’ had failed. That’s where a scene of missiles launching could have come in.
As much as I have enjoyed all the Mission: Impossible movies, I hope this movie is final, if just for dignity’s sake. I’d hate to see Ethan Hunt taking the liver-spotted Roger Moore/James Bond route. The Bond and MI franchises bear comparison – the scene of Hunt dodging missiles in a submarine recalls Bond’s fight with Janus at the end of Goldeneye (1995), although The Final Reckoning is on a much grander scale. Otherwise, I think what really separates Bond from Mi films is the tone meetings the creators attended.
Cruise has been a fantastic action hero, embodying the kind of adventurer celebrated in Charles Norton’s latest book, Serial Thrillers: The Adventure Serial on British Radio. The bi-plane sequence is itself a wonderful evocation of fictional heroes of The Great War, of whom Biggles is an obvious example.
I am sure Cruise will live to run again, but I think these particular adventures of Ethan Hunt have run their course. As what remains of Hunt’s team melt, into the ground, I actually had a tear in my eye. What a way to sign off.
Tim Robins
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is in cinemas now
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Web Links
• Mission: Impossible – Official Website
• Director Christopher McQuarrie talks Mission Impossible — The Final Reckoning, Tom Cruise, Top Gun 3
• Screenrant Interview with composers Max Aruj and Alfie Godfrey
• Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning Official Merchandise
• Mission: Impossible 6-Movie Collection (AmazonUK Affiliate Link)
• Mission Impossible – Series 1-7 Complete Boxset (AmazonUK Affiliate Link)
- About the Author
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A freelance journalist and Doctor Who fanzine editor since 1978, Tim Robins has written on comics, films, books and TV programmes for a wide range of publications including Starburst, Interzone, Primetime and TV Guide.
His brief flirtation with comics includes ghost inking a 2000AD strip and co-writing a Doctor Who strip with Mike Collins. Since 1990 he worked at the University of Glamorgan where he was a Senior Lecturer in Cultural and Media Studies and the social sciences. Academically, he has published on the animation industry in Wales and approaches to social memory. He claims to be a card carrying member of the Politically Correct, a secret cadre bent on ruling the entire world and all human thought.
Categories: Features, Film, Other Worlds, Reviews
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