The list of people on the planet most likely to love Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning before actually seeing it went 1) Tom Cruise 2) me. To say the last four installments are some of my favorite movies ever is an understatement. I began my rave, five-star review of Dead Reckoning by calling the franchise “a Hollywood miracle.” So, truly, this personally pains me to say…:deeeeep sigh:…the miracle has ended.
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is a disappointment full of boring exposition dumps, clunky dialogue, and a needlessly complicated plot that stops it from being the emotional farewell it hopes to be. It’s strangely lacking in action sequences and feels small. The magic that turned a dying franchise into something special after three films is nowhere to be found.
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning wants to deliver an Endgame-style film for the franchise. The problem is that unlike the MCU’s era-concluding movie, The Final Reckoning doesn’t trust its audience. It doesn’t think you know or remember anything that happened before. It’s part movie, part CliffsNotes of the series. It features a tedious, frustrating amount of flashbacks that kills the pace of the film. Unlike Endgame, which rewarded viewers who’d invested the most into everything that came before it, for inexplicable reasons The Final Reckoning only cares about people who don’t even know who Ethan Hunt is. This movie punishes the people inclined to love it the most.
Removing the never-ending cascade of annoying flashbacks wouldn’t solve another problem, though. The movie’s many connections to previous films are hit-or-miss. Which ones hit and which ones miss will depend how much you think they’re earned versus feeling forced/fan service-y. I don’t want to spoil any of those connections to past films specifically. I’ll just say I ran the full gamut of emotions with them. Some made me think, “That’s awesome,” while others had me saying, “Give me a break.” The most important one garnered an unenthusiastic, “I guess that’s fine.”
(When you inevitably find yourself bored to tears during another dull exposition-laden moment—including an interminable briefing scene—try and guess which ones I liked and which ones I didn’t. I promise that will be more interesting than being told something you almost certainly already know.)
The Final Reckoning has lots of other issues, too. It’s not very funny, a staple of the last four installments. The impeccable urgency and pace of those perfect action-movies are also mostly absent. This script is simply not that good. There are a few moments where you see what made the last four films special, but those are too sparse to overcome the movie’s foundational flaws.
It doesn’t help that, unlike its four immediate predecessors, this movie doesn’t look as good. Far worse is that it feels small. (Small, not intimate.) The scope that made this series special is mostly gone. That might be The Final Reckoning‘s biggest sin. Forget dives into giant water tanks and car chases through massive desert storms. This franchise made Tom Cruise running atop an airport roof feel epic and grand.
But most of this movie takes place in dark tunnels, offices (both office in buildings and on boats and submarines), and caves. It’s the antithesis of a franchise that turned things around by having Cruise hang off the side of the world’s tallest building.
It’s not exactly a great sign that when the movie finally got to the big promised biplane sequence I felt relief more than excitement. I was just happy to be outside again!
The good news is that it didn’t take long for that relief to actually transform into excitement. That plane sequence is absolutely incredible. It’s pure Mission: Impossible, the franchise at its best. It’s one of two stunning action scenes in the film. The other takes place in the abandoned submarine this movie was always destined to visit. It plays like a horror movie crossed with a disaster film inside an action movie. I have no idea how director Christopher McQuarrie filmed it. Along with the plane sequence, it’s one of the only parts of this movie I can’t wait to rewatch again and again.
But while there are some fun fights and plenty of Tom Cruise running mixed in, no other action sequence stands out as particularly memorable. Neither does the Entity itself. Despite being more powerful and having garnered a cult of human acolytes, it somehow feels less intimidating this time around. The Entity spends the whole film on the verge of ending biological life on Earth but mostly comes across as a big digital dork. At least Esai Morales has a lot of fun as the film’s other villain, Gabriel. He’s more unhinged, desperate, and scene-chewy this time.
While no one in the cast is bad, the script prevents most of its cast from doing anything memorable. There are a few standouts, though. Henry Czerny’s Eugene Kittridge is still the best any time he speaks. Severance‘s Tramell Tillman shows up and steals every scene he’s in. And a moving Ving Rhames provides the film’s only earned pathos. His Luther is the one character who truly feels like he’s in the movie this movie is trying to be, because The Final Reckoning really yearns to make you very emotional.
And if there was anyone on the planet that should have been true of it’s me! The trailers made me emotional. Yet, somehow, the actual movie just made me feel frustrated and bored for the majority of its needlessly long runtime of nearly two hours and 45 loooooong minutes. I guess it need all the time to both a) include way too many overly complicated plot points and b) also keep explaining them over and over again. And again. And again….
Mission: Impossible became my favorite movie franchise when it suddenly, somehow, went from bad to the best thing ever. The fact it did will always be a Hollywood miracle to me. But I now have to reckon with the fact that after four amazing films a mediocre movie ended that miracle.
This film races into theaters on May 23.
Content shared from nerdist.com.