‘Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning’ Review: Dazzling Set Pieces Cannot Save the Franchise from Disappointing Setbacks

The Final Reckoning is positioning itself to be the final Mission: Impossible. Whether that’s true or not, I imagine, relies mostly on how much the film the grosses and how much Tom Cruise is up for returning. Regardless, the film very much acts like the franchise’s swan song, for better and worse. It has all the action flourishes we have come to expect from Cruise and his IMF teammates over the nearly 3 decades of missions they’ve racked up. It also attempts to tie everything up in a neat little bow that feels more like cheap fan service than truly mission oriented. The set pieces are spectacular and dazzling for any fan of the franchise, but they’re not enough to save the franchise from its own disappointing story setbacks. The Final Reckoning is one Mission: Impossible I’m not eager to accept.

After obtaining the cruciform key at the end of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, Ethan Hunt continues his pursuit of Gabriel and of a way to shut down the artificial intelligence known as the Entity that has been infecting and taking over all of the world’s systems. As the doomsday clock ticks closer and closer to midnight, Ethan must locate the sunken Russian submarine Sevastopol and figure out how to retrieve the Entity’s source code so he can prevent it from launching a global nuclear attack between all nations. Meanwhile, Gabriel seeks to control the Entity and thus, control the world. It’s a three-way race to the potential end of humanity as we know it.

Or for the IMF, it’s just another Tuesday. There is a lot of plot going on in this movie and what it essentially boils down to is another potential global catastrophe that only Ethan Hunt and his team can save the world from. The rise of AI couldn’t be a more timely subject matter and while the film takes it to the absolute worst case scenario, there are some interesting ideas here. Unfortunately, the majority of the dialogue revolves around wordy exposition explaining what the Entity is doing or step-by-step their plan to stop it. Not everything needs to be explained in such detail or multiple times during the film. I didn’t come to a Mission: Impossible movie to learn the intricacies of algorithms and source codes. Just give me the basics and then move on.

The other issue with the story is that there is way too much focus on the past. All throughout the film we’re subjected to montages from previous Mission: Impossible films. It starts with a recap of Dead Reckoning, which makes sense given that this one is a direct continuation of that. But with every instance of Ethan or someone else mentioning past events, and trust me there are a lot of them, the film flashes back to remind you of the whole franchise. It’s wouldn’t be too bothersome if it did it once or twice, but there are so many distracting moments and even some of the same clips get replayed multiple times. At an almost 3-hour movie in length, there could have easily been some cuts made. Most fans of the franchise who have stuck with it for the past 30 years don’t have to be reminded of every little detail and reference. Without going into spoilers, there is some fanservice that is well done and properly flushed out, but there is a lot that feels unnecessary as well. Not everything needs to be connected in the same way that the MCU and the Fast & Furious franchises are. The Mission: Impossible franchise was fine doing its own thing.

Thankfully, that is where the film still dazzles; the set pieces. There are two big ones and both are equally jaw-dropping. The first is when Cruise dives down to the Sevastopol to retrieve the Entity’s source code and escape. It’s a chillingly claustrophobic scene that lets Cruise shine in the murky depths of the ocean. There is no dialogue, no other people, and no going back. The other scene is the opposite and is a high intensity aerial ballet between two biplanes. The intense, action-packed fight between Ethan and Gabriel will leave you palms sweaty as Cruise literally holds on for dear life. It’s during these two set pieces that Cruise and the film showcase why the franchise is so entertaining. It’s thrilling to see Cruise physically do most stunts. There’s an unpredictable nature that comes with the physicality of literally hanging off the wing of a plane that can’t be captured when the same stunt is done against a green screen inches off the ground. The way the wind blows all around him and even just the way he moves; you can tell how he’s focused on just holding on and not just what position he needs to be in or where the camera is. There’s an urgency that a mostly CGI stunt can’t duplicate.

As great as those two action set pieces are, they aren’t enough to distract from how mediocre the rest of the film is unfortunately. Tom Cruise is getting old. He’s 62 as a matter of fact, and while he’s still in phenomenal shape, he’s definitely not as spry as he once was and it shows. The action is stiff. The camera work tends to focus on a lot of back and forth closeups of characters with little movement. There’s even one scene where the camera stays on Hayley Atwell’s face as she reacts to Cruise brawling with a bad guy in the background. You don’t see him at all but judging by the sounds, her reaction, and the bloody aftermath, it was brutal. The scene plays well for a laugh, but I would have rather seen the action. That’s what Mission: Impossible is all about anyways.

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning shows its age more than any other film in the franchise. 30 years is a long time to be around for any franchise so it’s impressive that it’s managed to make it this far in general. But perhaps it’s time to actually embrace the finality that the title suggests.