‘mission: impossible - the final reckoning’ review

By Nadia Dalimonte

Tom Cruise in “Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning”

*This review contains spoilers for “Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning.”

“We live and die in the shadows, for those we hold close, and for those we never meet.”

Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) refuses to sacrifice the people he holds close. No matter how complex his missions, he goes above and beyond to take care of his team. It is precisely this level of dedication, along with the team’s camaraderie, that makes each globe-trotting “Mission: Impossible” so uniquely thrilling and enduring. The franchise earned its thirty-year legacy with stunt-forward action sequences, heightened emotional stakes, and intricate plots that captured the urgency of topical subjects. Recurring themes of loyalty, betrayal, and government accountability added layers to Ethan Hunt’s journey as a disillusioned solo act turned team leader. The subject matter also evolved over time, with a rogue AI program in particular driving the plot of the final two instalments — “Dead Reckoning” and “The Final Reckoning.”

In the opening heist sequence alone, “Dead Reckoning” established the threat of the Entity so well that “The Final Reckoning” feels less urgent in comparison, even with a literal nuclear war imminent. Technically, the stakes of “The Final Reckoning” are astronomically higher than previous instalments. Ethan and the IMF gang must work against the clock to save humanity from an apocalypse. The key they obtained from Gabriel (Esai Morales) in “Dead Reckoning” unlocks a chamber inside the sunken Russian submarine, The Sevastopol, which holds the Entity’s source code. The team accept their mission to determine the coordinates of The Sevastopol, and retrieve the source code to inject it with a poison pill that would shut down the Entity for good. The scope of this mission requires Ethan to ask President Erika Sloane (Angela Bassett) for resources, and time. Meanwhile, an outcasted Gabriel seeks to thwart Ethan’s plan and gain control of the Entity.

Splitting the Entity across two instalments ultimately robs “The Final Reckoning” of an emotionally satisfying narrative. The story begins two months after the events of “Dead Reckoning,” and the AI threat has escalated into Armageddon territory without a proper buildup. Before setting the flimsy objective in motion, “The Final Reckoning” indulges in a series of montages and narrative callbacks mainly from the one that started it all: Brian De Palma’s 1996 original. The stunt-driven montages are easier to get behind; it’s understandable to jump into a final film off the energy of Cruise’s remarkable showmanship and everything he has accomplished for audiences to enjoy at the movies. It’s a giant thank you to Tom the movie star, whose current reputation as “movie saviour” is on full display here. 

Director and co-writer Christopher McQuarrie adheres to the unspoken rules of a final franchise film: callbacks and casualties. The callbacks to previous characters and plot points feel unnecessary here, and creates a disjointed experience in attempting to engage with multiple threads at once. It’s a surprising, disappointing route to watch McQuarrie go in, considering the superb structures of “Fallout,” “Rogue Nation,” and “Dead Reckoning.” Perhaps the weight of having one last chance to explore Ethan’s world brought upon the pressure to include more references. Or, the inclusion of excessive callbacks were a way to emphasize that this franchise is indeed over. Whatever the intention, the first half of “The Final Reckoning” stumbles over a whole lot of flashbacks, and one particular narrative tie-in to “Mission: Impossible III” that carries no weight whatsoever.

McQuarrie keeps the casualties to a minimum, assuming the death of one legacy character in the first half will raise enough stakes to expect more loss. However, the lack of emotionality leads to one of the most disappointing, weightless sequences of the franchise. From this point on, the film wrestles between moments of finality where you are led to believe Ethan might genuinely be in trouble, and moments of perseverance where you know he’ll save the day. The previous films found a neat balance of danger v. endurance, but because the stakes in “The Final Reckoning” feel unearned, the film struggles to find that equilibrium.

It’s in true “Mission: Impossible” fashion for characters to talk through their plans amongst themselves, and for the films to provide visuals on how the plans ought to unfold. This franchise has taken liberties to over-explain intricate details of plots, but the explanations in “The Final Reckoning” do reach a point of exhaustion. The film buries a great premise under exposition, missing the opportunity to show instead of tell, as “Dead Reckoning” did with its elaborate airport heist to introduce key players, threats, and objectives. Ethan spends a lot of time asking for permission to use resources for his mission, highlighting the impossibility and seriousness of it all. While the franchise generally has doses of self-awareness, and characters often know what they’re doing is absolutely insane, “The Final Reckoning” does take its mission very seriously, and that makes for some very contrived dialogue where Ethan needs to convince everyone to trust him one last time.

Buried underneath the exposition, McQuarrie and Cruise engage with intriguing text about the ways in which AI can mirror human behaviours and thought patterns, but cannot fully anticipate the choices humans make. As Luther (Ving Rhames) states in his moving speech during the film’s second half, nothing is written. We are masters of our own fate, and our fate is the sum of our infinite choices. Luther never had any doubt that Ethan would find a way to save the world. We know going into these films, even the final one, that no matter how seemingly impossible the mission, Ethan will prevail. And he will perform the most exhilarating stunts along the way.

From scaling a skyscraper in “Ghost Protocol” and jumping between high-rises in “Fallout” to motor biking off a cliff in “Dead Reckoning,” Tom Cruise has given us some of the most spectacular, death-defying action sequences in film history. “The Final Reckoning” builds onto Cruise’s repertoire with two stunt-forward set pieces that utilize the elements in vastly different ways. Ethan’s awe-inspiring descent into the ocean to enter the submerged Sevastopol excels in restraint and a slow-build of suspense. From the initial dive, the sequence intensifies as Ethan navigates floating missiles, torpedo chambers, and the nightmare fuel of deceased crew members, not to mention a surprise turn of events that leads him to abandon his suit. 

The submarine sequence also gets a boost of anticipation from compelling storytelling beforehand, when Ethan boards the USS Ohio and meets captain Jack Bledsoe (an outstanding Tramell Tillman). It’s the most spellbinding element of the entire film, thanks to the absolutely magnetic charm and nuance Tillman brings to his role. Every instance that Bledsoe calls Ethan “Mister” evokes a deep curiosity and pushes you to lean in, eager for what the character will do next. Plus, the USS Ohio team includes a totally magnetic Katy O’Brian who, dare I say, has more chemistry with Tom Cruise than Hayley Atwell does.

While the submarine elements unfold, the film cuts to Ethan’s team huddled inside a log cabin in the Arctic where they must work with William Donloe (Rolf Saxon), a character from the first “Mission: Impossible” to find the Sevastopol coordinates. The spirited dynamic between Benji (Simon Pegg), Grace (Hayley Atwell), Paris (Pom Klementieff), and Degas (Greg Tarzan Davis) emphasizes how much the film overall misses that team camaraderie. While perfectly understandable that the team needs to split up for the intricate plan to work, their separation comes at a cost. The film loses out on some of its emotional resonance, narrative tension, and playful banter. That lack of team connection adds salt to the wound of Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson), by far one of the greatest characters to ever appear in the franchise, getting killed off in “Dead Reckoning.” 

When Ethan and the gang do eventually find their way back to one another, at a bunker in South Africa that contains the archive of human knowledge, the team faces another split, but this time around, it works to craft tension. Ethan chases Gabriel (who has the poison pill) by plane, while an injured Benji guides Grace and Paris on next steps to execute the plan’s final piece, while Donloe works to diffuse a bomb. The quick cuts between these events, and the remarkable plane sequence that holds the final act together, give the Entity storyline a satisfying finality. But as far as Ethan’s future goes, the door is still open for potentially more missions.

Cruise and McQuarrie may have accepted “The Final Reckoning” as their last instalment together in the “Mission: Impossible” franchise, but the film doesn’t fully reckon with the finality. McQuarrie holds onto the legacy for dear life, from incorporating montages and flashbacks, to developing shared histories between characters that offer nothing particularly noteworthy. Even the final scene, faintly reminiscent of Christopher Nolan’s “Inception,” feels more like a ‘see you around.’ But perhaps that’s as close as one can get to wrapping up the cinematic lifespans of these characters. As Luther’s self-destructing message echoes, the world still needs Ethan Hunt, should he choose to accept it.

“Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning” is now playing across Canada.