Review: "Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning"
The eighth entry in the action-packed franchise underwhelms yet occasionally thrills in Ethan Hunt's final mission.
Mission: Impossible is one of those franchises that has consistently improved with each entry (excluding M:I-2), jacking up the stakes with jaw-dropping action and thrills, courtesy of Tom Cruise’s proclivity to defy death through some of the most insane stunts imaginable, delivered for the sake of entertainment to theatre audiences.
The Final Reckoning, the self-proclaimed conclusion to Ethan Hunt’s story, picks up where Dead Reckoning left off, following the IMF agent and his team racing against time to destroy the Entity, a rogue artificial intelligence, before it unleashes a catastrophic nuclear war upon the world, with the help of its messenger, Gabriel (Esai Morales).
Like its predecessors, the film does an excellent job when the action kicks in, building tremendous amounts of suspense and tension. Two set pieces in this film, one involving a flooded submarine and the other being the climactic biplane chase, are arguably amongst the strongest sequences in the entire series. These mind-blowing, exhilarating scenes alone were undoubtedly worth the purchase of an IMAX ticket.
Unfortunately for The Final Reckoning, action set pieces (which are the franchise’s trademark) take a backseat. One of the main issues that plague this film is its overabundance of exposition and dialogue. A vast portion of the runtime (which clocks at noticeably near 3 hours long) involves Ethan and the team, as well as an overwhelming set of new characters (who are written paper-thin and hard to care about), theorizing how to stop the Entity and predict its next move. It’s substantially more talk and less show. Additionally, its exhaustive narrative connections and countless references to previous films force audiences to sit through extensive flashbacks of scenes and moments already shown in the franchise, which proved to be tedious in my opinion.
The storytelling and writing itself isn’t as strong and compelling as previous missions, either. The unity of the new team (outside of returning agents Luther and Benji, which the film sorely needed more of) felt disjointed, and a huge portion of what makes Mission: Impossible so great is the chemistry between the protagonists, and their unique characterization and skills. The performances here are good (there are some strong moments and character beats on occasion), but I expected more.
It’s certainly not a bad film by any means. While the lows are pretty low for the franchise, the highs, while fewer than desirable, are astronomically high. And yes, we do get to see Ethan Hunt running for his life at unprecedented speeds, not once but TWICE (a franchise record, it seems).
I’ve always been a big fan of Mission: Impossible; I grew up on these action films and always found myself revisiting them and enjoying with my family. It’s a franchise that has been purely entertaining and enjoyable, and I admire the folks behind the screen who have worked together and worked hard to bring audiences into the movie theatres to experience these films. I also admire one of the central themes behind Dead Reckoning and The Final Reckoning; there’s something satisfying and important to be said about the heroes fighting to protect the world against the threat of artificial intelligence that is pretty relevant in times like now. I am, however, saddened to report that The Final Reckoning, while very strong at times, caps off this memorable series with a fizzle and not a bang.
Rating: 3/5
Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning is in theatres now.
