Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning - Review

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

IF The Final Reckoning is, as reported, the final Mission: Impossible for Tom Cruise, then it's a strangely underwhelming way to go.

Written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie, who has overseen the franchise since Rogue Nation, the latest instalment is the second part of a story that began in the previous film, Dead Reckoning, but which also - more ambitiously - seeks to connect itself to every film that has come before it more directly than ever before.

But therein lies one of the problems. The need to make it coherent requires a lot of exposition and there are times when Final Reckoning feels overly convoluted and more than a little bloated.

But there are other problems too. The central villain, a piece of AI known as The Entity (which was introduced in the previous film), feels equally underwhelming. I get where McQuarrie is coming from in terms of the threat that AI may pose to global stability, particularly within a nuclear context. But it lacks the menace, emotional intensity and physicality of the franchise's best villains, whether that's Philip Seymour Hoffman's scene-stealer in Mission: Impossible III, or Henry Cavill's rival agent in Mission: Impossible - Fallout.

Here, we have Esai Morales, who has his moments. But his character remains largely in thrall to The Entity and isn't afforded the screen time necessary to really make him more menacing. And that's no fault of Morales, given that he does get to waste more of Cruise's allies than any previous nemesis has so far managed.

The other great problem, for me, is that Final Reckoning feels more like a Tom Cruise vanity project than ever before. 

True, previous films have long been a showcase for the actor's stunts - but they have also seen Cruise's character, Ethan Hunt, work more as a team than in this one.

Here, we have Cruise in various states of undress as if to magnify his physique - which, admittedly, is very buff for a 62-year-old. But there's also a script that feels way too reverential - too much of the plot hangs on Hunt's individual ability to save the world. I lost count of the number of times a senior character described how the fate of the world literally hinges on Hunt's decision-making, or how every one of his previous decisions has come down to this.

It's a film driven by its star's ego.

Cruise has, of course, earned the right to be so revered, given the way he has continually elevated cinema and even 'saved' it, according to Steven Spielberg, in his post-pandemic praise for the superstar.

And he does what he does extremely well. Here, he is once more put through his paces as Hunt, called back into the field as the world's last chance at avoiding nuclear armageddon at the hands of The Entity, which is seeking to take control of what is then left of humanity.

Reuniting with what's left of his team - Grace (Hayley Atwell), Luther (Ving Rhames) and Benji (Simon Pegg) - Hunt sets off on a globe-trotting adventure that involves plunging the depths of the ocean to find a nuclear submarine that is vital in preventing The Entity taking control, or taking to the sky in a bi-plane to wrestle another vital piece of technology from his main rival (Morales). Both sequences embody the best moments in the franchise: the former embodying the same kind of breath holding tension that made the CIA break-in in Brian De Palma's original so memorable, the latter encompassing Cruise's plane-holding opening stunt in the opening moments of Rogue Nation and the helicopter chase at the end of Fallout.

Both are worthy of the big screen experience, too - and for all of its faults, The Final Reckoning does still deserve to be seen on a very big screen. Indeed, the bi-plane sequence comes complete with a breathtaking South African backdrop, which also benefits from a widescreen format.

But it's just a shame that the 5-star momentum McQuarrie has been building since Rogue Nation runs out of puff during this final entry - and that so much hangs on Cruise and Cruise alone.

I would have loved to have seen more of Benji (Pegg, here, is somewhat restrained and a lot more serious than normal), while the promise (and wit) displayed by Atwell's wily thief is also sorely missing. She's not given a great deal to do. Rhames, meanwhile, is suitably earnest as Luther - the longest serving member of the team - and while he does get a suitably emotional send-off (as well as a monologue that serves as something of a state of the world address), he is perhaps allowed to go a little too early. I also felt there could have been much more made of both the characters played by Pom Klementieff (so effective in Dead Reckoning as a kick-ass rival) and Shea Whigham, whose big connection to another past character also feels under-developed.

On the other hand, I liked what McQuarrie did with the returning Rolf Saxon as CIA analyst William Donloe from the original movie, and Henry Czerny remained as smarmy and difficult to read as ever as Agent Eugene Kittridge (another veteran of the original).

And in amongst the two big set pieces that I've previously discussed, there's also a couple of decent fist fights and foot chases which maintain the action momentum.

It's just a shame that The Final Reckoning couldn't have felt more streamlined, sharper and perhaps even more innovative stunt-wise. For while everything works fine, there's nothing to really rival the sheer jaw-dropping bravado of Dead Reckoning's Rome-set car chase, or train-based finale; Fallout's Paris chase or its helicopter finale; Ghost Protocol's Burj Khalifa sequence; or Rogue Nation's opener and subsequent underwater segment that immediately catapulted its star into a car chase and motorcycle chase.

Taking those instances into consideration when considering the franchise as a whole, however, it's been one hell of a wild ride and a complete blast.