The “Mission: Impossible” franchise, begun in 1996, reaches what is purported to be its final reckoning in “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning.” Given Tom Cruise’s flair for stunt acrobatics and Hollywood’s penchant for perpetually cashing in on a good thing, I wouldn’t count on it.
In “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One,” the seventh installment from two years ago, Cruise’s Ethan Hunt and the Impossible Missions Force (IMF) – Luther (Ving Rhames), Benji (Simon Pegg), and new addition ace pickpocket Grace (Hayley Atwell) – confronted a new-style villain. The Entity was a sentient artificial intelligence program capable of infiltrating any operating system – i.e., controlling the world. In case you need a refresher, series veteran director Christopher McQuarrie and his co-screenwriter Erik Jendresen, pepper “Final Reckoning” with a plethora of flashbacks. As if the plot were really what we care about in these movies.
What we do care about, and what “Final Reckoning” finally delivers on after an overly expository first hour, is watching Tom do stuff. Set pieces involving a sunken submarine and buzzing biplanes amply fulfill the franchise’s main selling point.
Why We Wrote This
Is this really the end for “Mission: Impossible”? Our reviewer isn’t so sure, but he says the eighth and perhaps final installment of the franchise that began in 1996 has something indispensable going for it: the fearlessness of its Hollywood star.
But to get to that point in this almost three-hour movie, we have to sit through a lot of doomy jawboning from the U.S. president (Angela Bassett) on down to the IMF squad itself. Who knew the impending apocalypse could be so talky? There are too many times when characters say things like “You mean to say?” or “What’s the play?” or “This will be our last chance.” Apparently the Entity, aided once again by its human helpmate Gabriel (Esai Morales), is set to annihilate humankind in four days unless Ethan and Ethan alone can disable it. To do so, he must access the source code conveniently resting in a Russian sub at the bottom of the Bering Sea.
One of the drawbacks to “Final Reckoning” is that, in the rescue operation, as in much else, Ethan is basically going solo. The IMF squad figures in the action, but largely independent of his exploits. This means that the camaraderie factor, one of the saving graces of the series, is skimped. Even the addition of Paris (Pom Klementieff), the assassin from the last film turned ally, is downplayed.
There’s also not a whole lot of humor in “Final Reckoning,” unless it’s the innate comic appeal of watching Ethan’s flabbergasting derring-do. I realize the end of the world is nothing to laugh at, but I kind of miss the campy presence of, say, a Bond villain type. The Entity is too abstract to qualify as a world-class evildoer.
I’m not sure it makes sense to have the Entity’s source code residing inside a sunken sub-Arctic sub, but at least things pick up when Ethan, outfitted in the latest in submergible outerwear, glides inside. This sequence has a compelling underwater lyricism. Ethan’s stealthy moves through the cavernous fuselage play almost like a silent movie. (And for once, the boom boom musical score is thankfully minimized.)
Even better, for sheer excitement, is the biplane fight-in-the-sky between Ethan and Gabriel, who has gone rogue on the Entity and believes himself invincible. The two planes loop and roll and hammer, and the maneuvers are thrilling to watch. We’ve seen Cruise do this sort of thing before, gripping the outside of planes and walking on wings and what not. But it doesn’t grow old.
Cruise, however, is now in his 60s. This brings up an interesting point: Assuming, as endlessly promoted, he actually does his own stunts, would we have the same visceral response to these scenes if he didn’t? How much of our enjoyment comes from knowing that a great big movie star was putting his life on the line for … a movie? Cruise, in his public pronouncements, comes across as the CEO of his own destiny, and so there’s something almost messianic about his daringness in these films. But there may come a time when even he, or the insurance companies, will recognize that to continue on in this way is truly Mission Impossible.
Peter Rainer is the Monitor’s film critic. “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning” is rated PG-13 for sequences of strong violence and action, bloody images, and brief language.
