By Reed Ripley
Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning
Directed by: Christopher McQuarrie
Starring: Tom Cruise, Hayley Atwell, Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames
Action | PG-13 | 2 hr 49 min
2.5 stars
Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning is Mission Impossible at its purest, for better at times, but mostly for worse. The writing is abominable, it’s broadly incoherent, and many scenes run way too long, seemingly only for Tom Cruise to prove to the audience (and maybe himself) that yes, he can still do this. And yet, Final Reckoning still delivers on the franchise’s promise of Cruise executing several incredibly difficult and technically marvelous stunts, and for that, it’s passable.
This is now the eighth Mission: Impossible entry, and it comes at a strange time for the franchise. Things could not have been better following 2018’s Mission: Impossible—Fallout, one of the franchise’s best, if not the best. Cruise definitively reestablished Ethan Hunt as one of our greatest modern action heroes after the franchise’s attempts to move on from the Hunt character didn’t work, and it looked like we were headed for another decade of incredible MI stories.
However, it took MI a full five years to come back, and in the meantime, the action genre moved on, and along with it, audiences. Just a year after Fallout, John Wick: Chapter 3—Parabellum came out, which clicked way more broadly than its first two entries and introduced a far more brutal, unrelenting type of stunt work that general American audiences hadn’t yet seen. Like MI, Wick features a generational action star (Keanu Reaves) and an aura around its stunt work, and in retrospect, Wick was a logical next step for audiences who wanted more edge and physicality post-Fallout.
Parabellum was one thing, but two more films released right before 2023’s Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning (originally styled as “Part 1” to Final Reckoning’s “Part 2”) made it very hard for MI in its current form to come off as anything more than a relic. First, there was 2022’s mega-blockbuster Top Gun: Maverick, one of Cruise’s best and truly one of the best action blockbusters ever. Maverick was far more successful than any MI movie, at least commercially, and it undeniably raised expectations, right or wrong, for the next Cruise release, Dead Reckoning.
And then, mere months before Dead Reckoning’s release, John Wick: Chapter 4 came out, which found massive success, both commercially and critically. Wick’s action and stunts pushed the bounds of anything general audiences had seen, and again, it raised general expectations for action movies, including the very next big release, Dead Reckoning. Fair or not, that was the landscape, and Dead Reckoning came and went.
The film itself was very good, but it felt immediately stale. The industry had passed it by, and audiences felt it. Fast forward a couple years to Final Reckoning, and that stale feeling has only become more pronounced. In almost every way, Final Reckoning is worse than its predecessor—worse writing, less developed characters, even more of an incoherent plot, and less memorable set pieces. Sure there are two brilliant sequences, one featuring a sunken submarine and one featuring dueling prop planes, but even those drag on way too long, which diminishes their overall impact.
It’s still a fun time at the movies, but Final Reckoning feels forgettable before even leaving the theater. It seems wildly unsure with itself, even down to whether this is indeed the final chapter for Ethan Hunt, despite the marketing assuring us that’s the case. It’s fine for what it is, especially for those MI fans who just want to see another Hunt story, but Final Reckoning shows MI needs a reset, whether or not Hunt comes along for the ride.
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