I have loved every iteration of the Mission Impossible movies. I adore the third film even though it’s not as high on the list for some – Philip Seymour Hoffman is a fantastic villain – and have enjoyed the peak of the franchise with movies 4 to 6. So it pains me to say that the final movie for Ethan Hunt – or so it appears at this point – isn’t quite the send-off I expected it to be. The Final Reckoning seems to have forgotten what makes these movies great in the first place. It’s not Ethan Hunt being super Jesus but rather the opposite; he’s a gambler who takes chances and makes mistakes – it is his fallibility and humanity that makes him interesting.
This movie puts Ethan Hunt on quite the pedestal: he becomes the man who can do it all. And yes, previous entries are always highlighting Hunt’s stellar skills, but his team plays a tremendous part in his success. The team dynamics isn’t quite there in Final Reckoning. Ethan is mostly on his own for this one, which means that the banter and humour that usually comes with the team working together isn’t present. The dialogue is also stilted and awkward, with everyone finishing each other’s sentences frequently and repetitively. It made me feel like we’re in the entity’s reality. It’s a strange decision given the franchise’s repudiation of A.I yet the dialogue feels so A.I generated.
Narrative threads from the first movie are not completed. Gabriel (Esai Morales) was the reason behind Ethan joining the IMF, yet we get no additional information about what exactly happened. That would have helped Gabriel feel more formidable instead of a puppet villain. Morales does great in the limited role though – he’s constantly hamming it up and looks like he had a blast doing these movies.
The Final Reckoning didn’t give us the emotional stakes these movies usually have. In M:I 3, Ethan is haunted by the death of his trainee, in Ghost Protocol, Agent Carter is driven by her desire for revenge after what happened to her lover. Ethan lost Ilsa to Gabriel in Dead Reckoning, yet he doesn’t seem to be affected by her death at all in this one. Hayley Atwell’s Grace becomes a mere replacement for Ilsa instead of having a proper arc of her own. She’s making heart eyes at Ethan, but we don’t know how to feel about this given how big a part Ilsa played in all the other movies. Atwell is so luminous and charismatic though – just lovely to watch and root for.
The two big set pieces are fantastic. The sevastapol scene was teased since Dead Reckoning, so it feels great to finally see it play out on the big screen. The scale of it is both awe-inducing and really plays up the cosmic horror vibes. I can’t imagine how difficult it must have been to shoot and conceptualise on screen. The final dual plane set piece is stellar as well but it does feel like a bit of a rehash of the helicopter sequence in Fallout.
Pom Klementieff returns as Paris but is given fewer moments to shine in this one compared to her unhinged performance in Dead Reckoning. She’s such an action star though, and has terrific chemistry with Simon Pegg’s Benji. I would love to see a M:I spin-off with the pair.
The reduced spaces for characters like Paris and Benji is why the movie doesn’t succeed as much as it could have. We have tons of brilliant actors in bit parts. This is Cruise’s send-off so of course they would go all out on the scale of the set pieces, but this ends up diluting what makes the movies so fun in the first place. The Final Reckoning thus ends up a bit of a mixed bag, but it’s still a great reminder of why we go to the movies.
REVIEW SCORE: 3.5/5
