- 05/06/2025
Tom Cruise retires from the franchise, but Film Brain finds this final entry to be an unwieldy mess somewhat.
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00:00Hello, and welcome to Projector, and on this episode, Tom Cruise accepts his final mission as Ethan Hunt in Mission Impossible, The Final Reckoning.
00:08Two months after the events of Dead Reckoning, Ethan Hunt, played by Tom Cruise, still has the cruciform key that will help him stop the increasingly powerful AI entity.
00:33As the world nears the brink of nuclear destruction, Ethan and his team need to get to the entity's source code by locating the sunken Russian submarine, Sevastopol, and destroy the entity once and for all.
00:46Well, after 30 years, Tom Cruise has finally decided to hang up his running shoes and is retiring from the Mission Impossible franchise.
00:53I mean, can you blame him? Cruise first started in the film version of the 60s television series in 1996, when he was 34.
00:59He's 62 now, and while he's looking extremely good for it, there's probably only so long he can keep doing those incredibly intense stunts that the Mission Impossible movies are known for.
01:10So, once again, he's re-teamed with his regular co-collaborator, Christopher McQuarrie, who returns to the director's chair for the fourth film in a row, and he also writes the script once again.
01:20McQuarrie and Cruise have a very long creative partnership that goes back to Valkyrie, and he's often been called in to brush up the scripts for most of Cruise's films since then, credited or not.
01:32But while Cruise himself has shown a little sign of slowing down outside Mission Impossible, the franchise itself has shown a little bit of it lately.
01:39While Fallout is considered to be one of the best action films of the last decade, Dead Reckoning was a little bit underwhelming at the box office.
01:47This was despite the fact that it was marketed heavily as being part one in a two-part finale for the series, but that part of the title was soon dropped after it left cinemas.
01:57It's rather telling that even though this is a continuation, they've given this a new standalone title to emphasise that this really is the very last one.
02:06And I have a lot of fondness for the Mission Impossible films.
02:09I saw the first when I was six years old on VHS, and it's probably a big reason why I became so into films when I was a kid.
02:16Aside from the second one, which has kind of become the black sheep of the franchise, the series has been very consistent in quality,
02:22and I've been to see every entry since the third in the cinema when they came out.
02:27And I'm certain I'm not the only one who has grown up alongside this franchise.
02:31And the expectations for this last one are massive, and I'm sure that Cruise and McQuarrie are aware of that.
02:36The mission, which they've chosen to accept, is to not only try and wrap up the story they started in Dead Reckoning,
02:43but also do so for the entire several decade-long franchise.
02:47And in order to try and top what they've done before, it has to be the biggest, most spectacular, most impossibilist film they've ever done.
02:56So do Cruise and McQuarrie succeed in their mission?
02:58Well, they light the fuse.
03:00But this doesn't quite end things on as big a bang as I'd hope.
03:04Honestly, it comes perilously close at times to being a bit of a disappointment.
03:09And the unwieldiness of what the file Reckoning has to accomplish can be seen right from the very start,
03:14where it opens with Ethan Hunt watching a VHS tape that not only has a lengthy recap of all the key plot points of Dead Reckoning,
03:20but also the entire franchise itself from the very beginning.
03:24Images and stunts from all seven previous entries, yes, even the second one,
03:29all quickly flash before your eyes to not only remind you, but also whet your appetite for what's to come.
03:35The movie sets up the idea that every mission Ethan has done before has all been building up towards this one.
03:42It even goes out of its way to call back to plot points from earlier installments and try to retcon them into this conclusion.
03:49Remember that MacGuffin from ages ago?
03:51Well, now it's this and that's important,
03:55even though that kind of undermines the simplicity of it in the first place.
03:59And it's a bit of a stretch to try and force it to fit into this story.
04:03And trying to force those connections back is definitely one of the weaker aspects of this finale.
04:08While there is one major callback that I did like,
04:11oh, hey, it's that guy.
04:13It mostly adds a lot of stuff that means ultimately very little
04:17and could have just easily been cut.
04:20For instance, one character has a revelation that should be a major part of the film,
04:24but then that character is mostly on the sidelines until they resolve this subplot with no one actually doing anything.
04:31That's not a character arc.
04:32That's just conflict for the sake of having a conflict.
04:35And it makes you wonder, why is it there?
04:38Is this meant to be some weird apology to fans of the TV show?
04:41What's the point?
04:42But normally, these films start with some big, exciting action to get your pulse racing.
04:48Most famously, with Ethan hanging onto the side of a plane during takeoff to open Rogue Nation,
04:52very much in the style of James Bond.
04:54And while you do get some action in the opener here,
04:57mostly you get characters talking about the plots at each other,
05:00after you've already had the plot told to you extensively by this point.
05:05It sets a pattern for much of the rest of the film.
05:07Characters don't really have conversations, they deliver exposition at each other.
05:12And then someone else delivers some more exposition,
05:15and after that, even more exposition.
05:19The movie has a pretty bad case of telling rather than showing.
05:22We're told the world is at the brink that people have developed a cult-like deification of the entity,
05:27which, like having an AI villain in the first place, is rather eerily prescient right now.
05:32But aside from the beginning in London with some protesters,
05:35Ethan and his team run around a remarkably empty world,
05:38bereft of people who aren't speaking characters.
05:42Ethan does the longest Tom Cruise run in recorded history,
05:45going halfway across London on foot seemingly,
05:48with not a single person on the street.
05:51There's a later scene where the team drives up somewhere,
05:53and they note that no one else is present,
05:55explaining that they've all been sent home due to a looming annihilation.
05:59The IMF talk about their oath to the people we never meet,
06:03but where are they?
06:05Dead Reckoning was filmed at the height of Covid,
06:07but you'd almost think it was this one,
06:09as that first part was way more populated,
06:12and it creates a strangely detached feel,
06:15when it should be making us see and feel that the world is falling apart.
06:19Instead, we get lots and lots of dialogue,
06:23which tells us how bleak things are getting,
06:25that everyone is distrusted with each other,
06:27and it's only getting worse with each passing moment.
06:30There's an excessive amount of time spent on people in meeting rooms and offices,
06:35usually paired up by Angela Bassett's president,
06:37who was formerly the CIA director in Fallout,
06:39with lots of recognisable faces,
06:41like Nick Offerman and Mark Gatiss,
06:43looking very, very serious in tightly framed close-ups,
06:47sometimes at Dutch angles, just to mix things up a bit.
06:50And if you think I'm bleating on about all the dialogue,
06:53then that's only because for a full hour of the final Reckoning,
06:56it's all talk and no action.
06:59It's not that this is different to the later several Mission Impossible films,
07:02it's just the sheer quantity of it.
07:05Those scenes were there to link together big extended set pieces,
07:08which broke them up a bit.
07:10Here, it's so much denser stained waffle,
07:13that you start to glaze over a bit.
07:16I had a bit of a eureka moment, bear with me on this.
07:18The later Mission Impossible films work as well as they do,
07:21because they work on the same principle as improv comedy.
07:25Yes, and just constantly trying to escalate.
07:30And that's especially true in the action sequences.
07:32They set up a tense situation,
07:34then something unexpected will happen that will make things even more difficult,
07:38so Ethan or someone else has to quickly adapt,
07:40and then something goes wrong with that,
07:42and that requires an even more precarious solution.
07:45That's how these films keep maintaining the tension,
07:48by building upon themselves,
07:50and that's what makes them so thrilling and watchable.
07:53But yes, and does not apply when it comes to plotting.
07:57When you set up an all-out nuclear war at the beginning of the movie,
08:01the stakes literally cannot get any higher than that.
08:04Macquarie keeps trying to make things even higher,
08:07but after that point, it simply becomes,
08:09yes, we know.
08:12Plot is not the same thing as story,
08:14and the file reckoning exemplifies that.
08:17The story itself is extremely simple,
08:19but there's a hell of a lot of plot.
08:21If you thought that Dead Reckoning was overplotted,
08:24oh boy, you ain't seen anything yet.
08:26Plot, plot, plot, plot, plot.
08:28Plot is the mechanics, the busy work,
08:31and this movie has a lot of characters needing to go here to do this.
08:34They need to do this thing,
08:35and it needs to be done at this very exact moment.
08:37There's more specific instructions than an IKEA manual.
08:39It bogs the movie down,
08:41not just because it needs to explain all this stuff as mentioned,
08:44but it just keeps adding steps.
08:46Why does he need to go to an aircraft carrier
08:48for some minor scenes with Hannah Waddingham on his way to a submarine
08:51when he could just go to the submarine directly?
08:54Isn't that more economical storytelling?
08:56The plossiness also comes at a bit of a disservice
08:59to the team outside of Ethan,
09:00who are largely there for its whims
09:02rather than given moments for themselves.
09:04That's not helped by the fact
09:06that they spent much of the film away from Ethan,
09:08and I think that one of the best parts of the recent outings
09:10has been them all working together as a unit,
09:13really leaning in on that team element.
09:15So it's very reliant on your connection with them from previous films.
09:19So Simon Pegg remains likable as Benji,
09:21a sadly underutilised Ving Rhames has got more soulful
09:25as he's got older as Luther,
09:26and Hayley Atwell returns as pickpocket Grace,
09:29who is still a bit of a novice outsider when it comes to espionage.
09:33Joining the team this time is Pond Clemente's Paris,
09:36who switched sides at the end of the previous film
09:38and remains memorably eccentric despite her small role.
09:42Also switching sides is Greg Tarzan Davis's Dager,
09:45who spent the last movie chasing Ethan with Cher Wiggum's Briggs.
09:48Now he's working alongside him.
09:50This is actually Davis's third film in a row with Cruise.
09:53He was also in Top Gun Maverick,
09:55but he wasn't exactly memorable in Dead Reckoning,
09:58and that doesn't change here.
10:00He might have more screen time and prominence,
10:02but he's still given very little to do.
10:04He's arguably the most generic of any team member
10:08that has been featured in these movies.
10:10As I said, Cruise's Ethan gets a lot of screen time by himself here,
10:14and the character remains the righteous moral centre of the series.
10:17Although there is rather a lot of speechifying
10:19that he's the only one who can take down the NC,
10:22almost to the point of making him a chosen one.
10:25You can feel the Cruise indulgences here,
10:28from the fact that he spent a lot of time showing off his ripped physique.
10:32I mean, if I had that at 62,
10:34I'd be doing that too, to be honest.
10:36But to a bit where Nick Hoffman and others read off his past exploits with awe,
10:40yes, we saw that in the video package at the start,
10:43do we really need to be reminded of them yet again?
10:46But one thing you definitely can't deny
10:48is that Cruise remains absolutely committed
10:50to doing the biggest, craziest stunts possible.
10:53And the film Farley starts to ignite in the second half,
10:56when it at last gets down to what we came here to see,
10:59starting with Ethan diving down to the sunken Russian submarine.
11:02That sequence where he makes his way through,
11:05trying to navigate around a maze of displaced torpedoes
11:08and a perilously rolling sub,
11:10is a truly nail-biting and claustrophobic sequence,
11:13especially as it's done without hardly any dialogue at all.
11:17And after all the dialogue that came before it,
11:19you'll appreciate the respite.
11:21It's also simultaneously one of the most preposterous moments
11:24of the entire franchise,
11:26not so much Mission Impossible as medically implausible
11:30that he manages to survive that.
11:31Even by these films' standards,
11:33that's a real stretch,
11:35requiring not one, but several contrivances,
11:38like a mobile decompression chamber,
11:40to try and get you to buy it.
11:42But hey, it's at least exciting and ridiculous.
11:46And from that point forward,
11:47the film is giving you the kind of thrills you want
11:49from a Mission Impossible movie,
11:51and the second half is a big improvement on the first,
11:54culminating in an absolutely phenomenal cross-cut climax
11:57that keeps amping up the pressure.
11:59The highlight is, of course,
12:01Ethan hanging on the sides of several biplanes in mid-air
12:04in a chase that genuinely had me on the edge of my seat.
12:07Again, not the first time that famous aviation fan Tom Cruise
12:11has had a big airborne stunt to climax one of these films.
12:14It actually feels a bit reminiscent of the helicopter battle in Fallout,
12:17but it is truly vertigo-inducing.
12:20I was sweating buckets,
12:22seeing Cruise once again putting himself on the line for our entertainment,
12:26especially once it turns into an airborne fight scene.
12:29It's a truly breathtaking piece of choreography and stunt work
12:32that's right up there with the very best this series has to offer.
12:36As the last ever set piece,
12:38it certainly ends the series on appropriately high note.
12:41And it should be enough that it gets rid of
12:43some of the bitter taste of the overly sluggish early sections.
12:47And that's the thing,
12:48there's a lot wrong here,
12:49but the stuff it gets right is truly breathtaking.
12:52And I can't really hate a film that,
12:55despite the gloom,
12:56says that no matter how grim things may seem,
12:59the future can be and is worth fighting for.
13:02And with the right amount of luck,
13:04anything's possible.
13:06The final reckoning just about encompasses this mission,
13:09but it's also a deeply flawed entry
13:11that may ultimately be one of the weaker films in the series,
13:14not reaching the heights of Ghost Protocol or Fallout.
13:17Ultimately,
13:18this Mission Impossible is a victim of trying to do too much.
13:22And the strain shows.
13:23Too much plot,
13:25too much dialogue,
13:26and far too many characters that it doesn't quite know what to do with.
13:29As much as I love Henry Kernsey's Kittredge
13:31and his tense relationship with Ethan,
13:33he's just kind of floating around the film.
13:36And it continues to have some of the problems
13:37that it inherited from Dead Reckoning,
13:39like a weak physical villain
13:41in the form of S.A. Morales' Gabriel,
13:43the former servant of the Entity,
13:45who's now trying to control it.
13:47Well, I think he is.
13:48His fuzzy motivations are mostly
13:50whatever stands in Ethan's way
13:52and his ability to pop up with nuclear bombs all over the place.
13:56I did notice that the film has abandoned
13:58trying to explain any further the connection
14:00that Gabriel had to Ethan's past,
14:02which was set up in Dead Reckoning,
14:05but wasn't really given a proper conclusion.
14:07And that weakens him even further.
14:09It's also a hint that Part 1's mixed reception
14:12has led to a retool between films,
14:14which might explain some of the jankiness here.
14:18It definitely would have benefited from an editor
14:20to really tighten things up,
14:22but there's enough brilliant, exciting moments
14:24that makes this still worth watching,
14:26even if the film really makes you work for them at times.
14:29It is not the best mission,
14:32but the fuse doesn't lead to a damp squib either.
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14:58Until next time, I'm Matthew Buck,
15:00and this review will self-destruct in five seconds.