Movie Review – Mission: Impossible The Final Reckoning

I remember seeing the first Mission: Impossible film in theaters as a teen. How great is this film, I thought to myself. When the second film was released years later when I was in college, my film class tore the trailer apart one afternoon as part of an assignment from our professor. Was it then that I realized that the second film would never live up to the original? Probably. I skipped out on the third film in theaters and went to the fourth with friends. It was then, with Ghost Protocol, that I felt the series that had so much promise got back on track. I’ve seen every M:I film in the theaters since. So it is needless to say that I was looking forward to The Final Reckoning.

The film centers around Ethan Hunt as he deals with the ramifications of every single decision he has made since the first film. Every death. Every friend he went out of his way to save even if it meant putting millions at risk. His crew, though changed from that first film, is in on his every plan. The President and her Cabinet? Not so much.

The stakes are high in this one as nefarious A.I. threatens to take over every country’s nuclear arsenal, or at least the eight countries that have nukes. Their plan is to trap the A.I. in some secret mass electronic archive while it destroys humanity. The kicker? It needs to manipulate Ethan into giving it access before it cuts itself off. In fact, it counts on Ethan to just be Ethan.

The A.I. really isn’t the real villain here. Not really. The real villain is human nature. The A.I.’s plan won’t work without being able to count on humans to do the worst thing possible – to drop the nukes on everyone else before they can do it to you. And there is a moment where the U.S. president must make that choice because she cannot count on Ethan to save them.

This film, more than the others, is filled with montages of footage from previous films just in case you forgot all that came before. Just in case you don’t remember who lived, who died, and who was loved by Ethan. It increases the emotional stakes and gives the viewer a glimpse into what goes on in Ethan’s head.

Of course there are Tom Cruise’s running sequences as he races against time followed by a lot of cool stunts. This is where he always excelled in these movies because he was always willing to put his life at risk to make the stunts look amazing. Two sequences in particular, one on a submarine and one with two planes, where the filmmakers went all in. The one with the sub takes a little bit of suspension of disbelief, but at this point, who cares. It’s a nail biter of a sequence and I loved every second of it.

All the actors fully commit here, and it as great to see the script give Angela Bassett something to do other than give Hunt orders. She gives a truly emotional performance so I love to see it.

This was a great send off for a series that took four movies to really find its groove, and for Tom Cruise who is the last remaining action star of his kind. By the end of this, he was limping from the broken leg he sustained filming Fallout but the film was not. For all its twists and turns, the film is a great emotional goodbye.

4 out of 5 stars.