The eighth movie in the Mission: Impossible series, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning feels like it was made for the big screen. A huge movie event, a fond recollection of other impossible missions past, and a reminder that this 30-year-old franchise still has some gas left in the tank.
Whether it ends up being the final Mission: Impossible film or not, The Final Reckoning certainly presents itself as such, featuring clips from all of the previous seven movies with hero Ethan Hunt doing insane things to save the day. It makes sure you know damn well just how iconic it all is, and the insane amount of stunts Tom Cruise has put himself through. The Final Reckoning, in a way, is a celebration of the franchise… which makes its slow pace and lack of mindless fun fall even flatter.
Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is back again, with his IMF team on what is pitched as their most dangerous mission yet: a battle against AI. As topical as that might be in a world where corporations are using Chat GPT more than relying on skilled workers, it’s a bit of a hokey villain to come to grips with. Called “The Entity”, it wants to destroy the world by taking over all of the nuclear sites across several countries and obliterating everybody, for… reasons unknown. Who would be there to turn it off and back on again if this happens? It doesn’t matter, really.
All that matters is that Ethan and his crew, including pickpocket Grace (Hayley Atwell), old faithful Benji (Simon Pegg), Luther (Ving Rhames) and more, have to band together to save humanity as we know it. The stakes are higher than ever, but that leads to a lot of melodrama and intense conversations over The Final Reckoning’s lofty near-3-hour runtime. By the end of the first hour, I was begging for more action, which is a shame given the opening segments of the film set up some relatively wacky antics as the gang gets back together. That momentum is swiftly lost, despite efforts from the President of the United States, Erika Sloane (an always watchable Angela Bassett), to reiterate the importance of this world-saving quest, along with another compelling performance from Tramell Tillman that elicits some giggles over how crazy this all really is.
“Even with its pacing issues, the action scenes we’re all here for do hit, and hit hard.”
Despite the big, likeable cast, this is really Ethan Hunt doing his thing, bouncing from place ot place by himself, putting himself in all sorts of outlandish scenarios, and risking his life. Tom Cruise is at his most Tom Cruise here, as he spends an uncomfortable amount of time swimming through an abandoned submarine deep under the sea. It’s a claustrophobic scene that drags on a little too long, but at least it is a contrasting type of danger from what Mission: Impossible usually presents.
Even with its pacing issues, the action scenes we’re all here for do hit, and hit hard. Fights are chaotic in the best way, with one notable battle contrasting Atwell and co. in a burning house on the surface, while Cruise takes on a foe while in his underwear deep underwater. Say what you want about the man, but his commitment to stunts and rocking a bod like that at 62 is impressive, to say the least.
The truly epic stunt scene (as seen in all the trailers and posters) has him up in the sky dangling dangerously from two Biplanes, complete with the wind comically smacking him in the face as he hangs on for dear life. It’s the exact type of moment that justifies the price of a ticket to the cinema; filmed with IMAX cameras (and IMAX being where we viewed the preview screening), it’s over-the-top, dangerous, visually stunning and edge-of-your-seat intense. It doesn’t fully save The Final Reckoning, but it does help the film to end on a high note as the whole team plays their part, in the blink of an eye, to try and save mankind.
At the end of the day, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is a self-masturbatory party that wants to deeply reference and highlight the series’ importance to pop culture history. It repeatedly shows clips from past films to justify the various narrative threads, reminds us of massive moments, and has characters (and actors) that quite literally were around when the first Mission: Impossible debuted back in 1996.
It’s nice for continuity, but your mileage here will vary, depending on how much of a fan you are of the franchise as a whole. As someone who bounced off and back on the Mission: Impossible movies from time to time, I enjoyed some of the reminders of past stunts, while also feeling confused by deep cuts that didn’t add anything meaningful to the plot of The Final Reckoning. Does it really matter that a side character is related to a villain from 20 years ago? It’s this sort of padding that shows the depth of the universe while also distracting from the fresh excitement we could be having instead.
Despite being a weak entry in the grand scheme of the series that could really use some fine-tuning, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning still has enough thrills to make for an enjoyable viewing by the time the credits roll. If this is indeed “one last time” for the Tom Cruise vehicle, it’s a sombre note to finish on. If the franchise keeps going like I expect, I hope that it manages to go back to more of the goofy fun that made Mission: Impossible so iconic in the first place.
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is in cinemas everywhere on May 17.
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Checkpoint Gaming attended a screening of Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning as a guest of Paramount Pictures Australia at IMAX Melbourne.
About the Author
Luke Mitchell
he/him
Luke spends his time making radio, playing video games, binge-watching TV, getting unreasonably invested in wrestling, hosting bear events and hanging out with his beautiful pets.
