By Matthew Moorcroft

Solid Recommendation

• Directed by Christopher McQuarrie
• Starring Tom Cruise, Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg
• PG-13

At the start of The Final Reckoning, humanity is a crisis. Marshall law is in effect, the nuclear weapon systems of several major nations are hacked into, and a doomsday cult following the The Entity, the major AI villain from the last Mission: Impossible film, has infiltrated every layer of government and military to enact it’s final plans. What are those plans? Total extinction, obviously, as it’s really the only way left to go for a series eight movies deep and nearly 30 years old at this point.

In a lot of ways, The Final Reckoning is the biggest and baddest Mission film ever made. It’s unwieldly runtime of nearly 3 hours and large, ensemble cast make this rather apparent, and now has the added task of being a clear final installment for our legendary team leader Ethan Hunt, especially after Dead Reckoning disappointed at the box office causing some clear last minute course changes behind the scenes to make it work. But it’s also the biggest in a sense of it’s sensibilities; gone are the reigns of those pesky little things called “plot” and “character”, instead The Final Reckoning is basically three spectacle sequences oddly stapled together, trying find some kind of consistent commonality in it’s ideas without feeling too haphazardly constructed.

The result is almost unwieldly as it’s runtime, and unfournately The Final Reckoning has the clear distinction of being the weakest Mission: Impossible in quite a while, though that doesn’t make it bad by any means. There is a large bar of quality to the series that inherently exists, and being a weaker Mission: Impossible simply just means you are just “pretty good” instead of the usual “great” or “fantastic”. The spectacle is still among the best in Hollywood blockbusters, and the committed cast performances give a sense of authenticity to an exposition heavy script that so wordy that sometimes it seems like people are just saying things sometimes.

And oh boy is it wordy. With this final installment much more concerned with delivering the action goods and the large scale setpieces more then anything else, the actual plot mechanics are mostly just there to fill time and explain why characters are doing what they are doing without actually developing them, as well as catching an audience up to speed on a story that seemingly was welded together by McQuarrie and Cruise as a way to tie up a bunch of a random loose ends together. While eagle eyed fans like myself will be impressed to see exactly what threads they pull on here – two of which in particular feel obvious in retrospect, and a third one wonderfully inspired – it’s strange that The Final Reckoning fails more as a Part Two then anything else, with so much of that film’s setup ignored in favor of a new dynamic that honestly isn’t explored as much as it could have been.

If I seem overly negative, it’s cause I am. The Final Reckoning is a big old mess of a script carried heavily by Christopher McQuarrie’s outstanding direction and Tom Cruise’s fantastic performance, and is mostly more proof of the two of them at least being something of an unstoppable pair in Hollywood. Even at the film’s most baffling, which is a first hour that stumbles around in flashbacks, table setting, and a weak sendoff for a long time cast member, there is good stuff that cracks in constantly. The team dynamics are still great, and McQuarrie’s eye for locales continues to soar high above other blockbusters of today. They look expensive and feel expensive, which in this day and age is something to be noticed.

Most of these issues mostly soften by the third though, which finally lets the gears loose and delivers one of the franchise’s best finales and best setpieces involving two biplanes that feels like it was illegal to shoot. There is a madcap glee to these particular stunts that feels almost silent film esqe, especially once the music begins to match up with certain stunts and it becomes intoxicating to watch. In fact, even earlier then that, once Cruise heads off into the ocean for a deep dive, the film basically kicks into high gear finally at the halfway point, finally getting some level of energy into a film that up to that point was sorely needing it.

And by the final images of The Final Reckoning, you will ultimately leave satisfied by the picture itself, even if as a finale to the overall saga and especially a continuation of Dead Reckoning it leaves a little bit to be desired. At the same time though, it’s rare to see a franchise end on it’s own terms so distinctly and definitively, and in an age of neverending stories that’s something to be admired and treasured. Turns out that was the real mission statement after all, huh?