Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning <img src="https://img.icons8.com/ios-glyphs/20/000000/star--v1.png"/><img src="https://img.icons8.com/ios-glyphs/20/000000/star--v1.png"/><img src="https://img.icons8.com/ios-glyphs/20/000000/star--v1.png"/>

Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning

This eighth entry in the Mission: Impossible franchise feels like a good place to end things. The series is rapidly ripening and it's possible that any more and we might be getting into the fruit fly stage. It's not going out on a limb to say they will probably continue until Tom Cruise is in traction but, by the looks of this warlock, he'll outlast us all.

The Final Reckoning is many things to many people. On the one hand, it's great fun, packed with tension and brilliantly edited to within an inch of its celluloid life (kudos to the editor with a name like a British snooker player, Eddie Hamilton).

On the other hand, it reeks with honking dialogue and convoluted exposition that wastes an awful lot of its lengthy run-time (170 mins, no thanks Mr. Bladder). One character actually says, "It's the end of the world as we know it." At this stage, I didn't feel fine. And for your bingo card, make a cross in the square for 'characters saying the name of the film IN the film'.

There's even a strange tonal shift from the other films, especially at the beginning. After a recap of the whole franchise, Ethan Hunt (the Cruiser) and Grace (Hayley Atwell) find themselves trapped in a cellar prepping for a bit of torture. This was a facsimile, almost down to the actual set, of the scene from Rogue Nation, switching out Rebecca Ferguson for Atwell. The main difference being that Grace doesn't do as much fighting as Ilsa did in the earlier film, but also it's played almost for giggles in this one. It's not terrible but it felt odd, like they weren't sure when to be serious and when to lighten the tension. I'd suggest this wasn't the place, all things considered.

The film doesn't really get going until the excellent submarine sortie sequence. This is peak Mission set-piece, and depending on your particular phobia, it's one of the most cheek-clenching of the lot. The addition of Tramell Tillman as Captain Bledsoe helped immeasurably. His performance straddles the edge of Steven Seagal films and Zucker/Abrams films without going too far either way. ("Mister, if you're about to poke the bear, you've come to the right guy.") Another great plus around this time was the Inuk actress, Lucy Tulugarjuk. Here was the right place to lighten the tension and she was a great implement for this task.

Thematically, The Final Reckoning is basically a cyberspace Lord of the Rings with the AI Entity as the ring, Gabriel (Esai Morales) as Gollum and the Cruiser as Frodo ("Nobody should use this, I'm going to destroy it"). There are the same old refrains of team loyalty and sacrifices for the greater good, and by this film, Hunt is morally above reproach and bulletproof to boot, even if there's a half-arsed attempt to crowbar in some retconning bollocks from Mission: 3 about him being responsible for helping the Entity by stealing the 'Rabbit's Foot' MacGuffin from that film. You what? Never mind, me either.

On this reimagining of past films in the series, having Shea Whigham's character revealed as Jim Phelps' son was a high level of unnecessary bullshit. All for a congratulatory handshake at the end? I'll pass. And I wonder if director Chris McQuarrie and co-writer Erik Jendresen (with McQuarrie) actually planned to be politically balanced. Let's have a black female president in Erika Sloane (Angela Bassett, channeling Kamala Harris) BUT also, let's name the aircraft carrier Hunt uses the George H W Bush. A bob each way maybe?

All this negativity aside, Pom Klementieff is good value as returning killer, Paris, and Atwell is fine, though she's given less to do than in Dead Reckoning, the first half of this story. As mentioned earlier, the cross-cutting in the fight scenes - the US submarine and the Arctic station - is extremely well edited and choreographed. These lads know how to turn out an exciting actioner. A tighter, less clunky script and a much shorter running time would have made this one of the best in the series.

Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning is in cinemas around the world now.

See also:

The pick of the series for me would be a tie between Rogue Nation (2015) and Dead Reckoning (2023), both directed by Christopher McQuarrie. And for a fantastic film written by McQuarrie, you can't go past The Usual Suspects (1995), directed by Bryan Singer.

Comments

The Fantastic Four: First Steps

A few years ago, we hit the S.S.P. (Superhero Saturation Point). And the best way for studios to arrest, or even maybe reverse, the law of diminishing returns is to JUST GIVE IT A FUCKING REST. There's enough residual goodwill in the fan base to guarantee profits....for now. But, as Malcolm Gladwell said, there must be a tipping point. So into this cinematic avalanche slips The Fantastic Four: First Steps , the first film of Phase Six and the thirty seventh overall! It's quite dull for the first 30 minutes, setting up the characters, ensuring the audience understands we're on a slightly different Earth (828), and a different time as well. It only gets going when the Silver Surfer (Julia Garner) appears and promises everyone death by devouring. She's not going to eat them, she works for a massive space turd called Galactus, played by Finchy himself, Ralph Ineson. He'll do the devouring. Here's the thing - this film is a perfectly serviceable entry, not brilliant,...

Friendship

Amazingly, this is a first feature from writer/director Andrew DeYoung, though he's had heaps of experience in TV and shorts. The pace is pretty tight, albeit it's a bit longer than the 'ideal' of 90 minutes for a comedy. This is a bittersweet story about stupid masculinity, loneliness, and performative societal posturing, but it certainly doesn't scrimp on the laughs. Friendship focusses on Craig (pronounced in that annoyingly American way to rhyme with Greg) (Tim Robinson), who sits right in the middle of the Larry David / David Brent / Alan Partridge Venn diagram. He's a totally oblivious tosser, but not in a mean way, he just doesn't know where the line is. Ultimately, he's lonely. He has succeeded in alienating his wife, who has recently beaten cancer, his son appears to tolerate him, but not in an eye-rolling way, and his work colleagues think he's a bit of a dick. Doesn't matter that they are also knobheads. His life takes a turn when a n...

Revelation Film Festival 2025 - Wrap Up

That's it for Rev this year and I can't help feeling I've missed something... Eight films isn't a bad effort but there were a few that I hope I can catch somewhere later. Anyway, here are the films I saw this year, in calendar order of viewing. First up was: U are the Universe ★ ★ ★ ½ Ambitious Ukrainian film by Pavel Ostrikov about the last person in the universe after an earth-destroying disaster. Andriy (Volodymyr Kravchuk) is running nuclear waste to Callico, a moon of Jupiter, when he gets the news. His fastidious on-board robot Maxim is his only companion until he gets a message from near Saturn. There are some lovely moments - 2001 music reveals a replacement office chair floating through space, the Open Me message, the sinister link to 2001 (set up earlier by the music), the tenderness of the burgeoning audio relationship - all leading to a sweet but realistically depressing conclusion. Wonderful pared down, yet grand filmmaking. Of Caravan and the Dogs ★...

El Jockey

This Argentinian film (also known as Kill the Jockey ) about a troubled rider in Buenos Aries, promises a lot but doesn't quite deliver. It starts like a rocket but pretty soon loses the run of itself, like a 1000m sprinter in the Melbourne Cup. I could see it fading about halfway through, but the punter can't help the jockey or the horse (or the film). Nahuel Pérez Biscayart plays the jockey, Remo, who seems to have a death wish, for reasons only alluded to. At the beginning of the film, he's found by his gangster boss's henchmen zonked out in a bar, and then returned to the track, where he spectacularly fucks up in the barriers. His pregnant girlfriend Abril (Úrsula Corberó) is worried but also occasionally amused by his erratic behaviour. When his boss brings over a Japanese horse for the big race, the pressure is on Remo to win, and cleanly as well. Considering he's been using horse medicine to get off, this isn't the easiest task. The race doesn't go to...

Superman

Well, it looks like I'm on the wrong side of recent film history with this one. Quite a few early signs are that this iteration of Superman isn't finding favour with the critics. I have to say, I thought it was a lot of fun. Not a world beater but certainly an improvement over the previous Snyder editions ( Man of Steel , Justice League , etc). One highlight is the editing, by Craig Halpert and William Hoy. It's snappy and witty, and some of the transitions are fantastic - Hawkgirl dropping a wrong'un cuts to a soluble tablet dropping into a glass of water, for example. The fight sequences aren't too ' Transformer -ised' either, that is, it's possible to tell what's going on. Writer/director James Gunn imbues the film with a lightness of touch and the humour, mostly from Nathan Fillion's Green Lantern, works most of the time. The casting is pretty spot on, too. In David Corenswet and Rachel Brosnahan, it's almost as though Gunn scoured the C...

Jurassic World: Rebirth

It's hard to keep track but this is the SEVENTH film in the Jurassic Park/World franchise and, aside from new characters and a couple of nice lines, it's pretty much the same as the others. The first film in 1993 has earnt its reputation as a high water mark in effects cinema (though I've never been a huge fan). To say returns have diminished since would be an understatement. This film jettisons the 'new' cast (Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard) and the original cast (Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum), who returned on and off, for a fresh bunch of potential dino-feed, led by Scarlett Johansson and Mahershala Ali. They play mercenaries who are hired to extract samples from three of the biggest free-roaming dinosaurs left in the equatorial region. The reason? Big Pharma believe these blood samples will help the fight against heart disease, and the trillions in returns won't hurt either. There are quite a few exciting sequences and the film's structure is ...

The Shrouds

Well, this is an odd film, and considering all the body horror David Cronenberg had delivered in the past, The Shrouds might just be his most inaccessible film. Straight up, Cronenberg is a great, important director. His style is much imitated and he's become a touchstone for a certain way of filmmaking in the industry. But he is capable of turning out some duds (see, or don't see, the awful Maps to the Stars ). This one has its moments but it feels like a personal project that, while he has earnt the right to make it, perhaps doesn't resonate as much with the wider public. Certainly not yours truly. It's a convoluted story involving graveyard technology, medical amputation, international espionage, conspiracy theories, artificial intelligence and dangerous sex. I realise this all sounds fantastic but a couple of these themes don't really go anywhere. Vincent Cassell plays Karsh, an entrepreneur who runs a tech company specialising in 3D imaging of people's rem...

Revelation Film Festival 2025

The Revelation Perth International Film Festival 2025 is almost upon us and there are some promising looking films on offer again this year. Rev Program Director, Jack Sargeant picks 5 of the films he's excited about: Lesbian Space Princess [Australia/87min Directed by Emma Hough Hobbs, Leela Varghese] Pavements [United States/128min Directed by Alex Ross Perry] Alice in the Cities [Germany/113min Directed by Wim Wenders] Pater Noster and the Mission of Light [United States/96min Directed by Christopher Bickel] September Says [Ireland, UK, France, USA, Germany/100min Directed by Ariane Labed] Aside from these, I'm also looking forward to the following: Of Caravan and the Dogs [Germany/89min Directed by Anonymous, Askold Kurov] The Thinking Game [United States/84min Directed by Greg Kohs] U are the Universe [Ukraine/101min Directed by Pavlo Ostrikov] Eddington [United States/148min Directed by Ari Aster] 1978 [Argentina/76min Directed by Luciano Onetti & Nicol...

F1: The Movie

As opposed to F1: The TV Show, or F1: The Book, or F1: The Function Key. Yes, this is a film about Formula 1 racing and it really wants us to love it, the racing even more than the movie itself. Brad Pitt is Sonny Hayes, a grizzled driver who jumps around from race to race, a drifter, a mercenary. After one of these races, Daytona, his old mucker, Ruben (Javier Bardem) shows up and offers him the chance of a lifetime. Come back to Formula 1. Hitting all the right beats so far. And continues to do so. If you've seen any sports film, you know this film. Just for the record, yes, there's a cocky young pup co-driver, Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris) and a gorgeous (thankfully middle-aged) love interest, Kate (Kerry Condon). It's no surprise that the writer/director combo here, Ehren Kruger and Joseph Kosinski, was also responsible for the underwhelming Top Gun: Maverick . This is a better, more grounded (pun intended) version of that film. It may be derivative but F1 is pretty s...

28 Years Later

23 years after 28 Days Later , and 18 years after 28 Weeks Later , comes this third in the trilogy. If it really can be called a trilogy, considering the biggest disappointment about it is that 28 Years Later is actually the first of another proposed trilogy. Like so many recent films, this has to be seen as big screen TV, leaving story elements to stretch out over further 'episodes'. Structurally, this is composed of two longish acts and then a third act of about 10 minutes, if that. So, yeah, not a lot of space for a resolution. Luckily, the end of the film offers some tasty possibilities for 28 Years and 28 Days Later (sounds shash but the third act starts with that time stamp). If this wasn't from the minds of writer Alex Garland and director Danny Boyle, there might be cause for concern. The story starts on an island off the coast of north-east England. The folk here have managed to stay mostly safe since the rage virus decimated the British Isles. There's a nar...

Film Shapes

Search This Blog