Over the course of nearly two decades, Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt and his team of IMF agents have saved the world multiple times, a fact thatMission: Impossible - The Final Reckoningreally wants audiences to remember. The ostensible conclusion to Ethan Hunt’s story straddles the line between nostalgia-baiting and efficient storytelling, couching it all in self-serious, end-times politicking and death-defying action sequences. It is unquestionably successful at all of it.
Once again, the dream team of Cruise and director Christopher McQuarrie have created a pitch-perfect summer blockbuster.Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoningsets the bar high for other action movies, and it quite literally reaches heights (and depths) that will be hard to emulate. While the series has lost some of the spy movie magic evident in earlier entries (especially the comparably smaller first movie from Brian de Palma), there’s no denying the thrills and tension packed into every minute of screentime.
Even though the studio and filmmakers smartly decided to drop the ‘Part Two’ from the title, this is still very mucha direct sequel toMission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning. Anyone sitting down to watchFinal Reckoningin the theater is going to need to revisit the previous movie, despite this entry’s best efforts to recap everything that has already happened. Suffice to say, Ethan Hunt is in hiding, with the McGuffin-esque key from the last film which is crucial to defeating the Entity, the faceless AI villain that has now wormed its way into every corner of cyberspace, taking control of nuclear weapons and even gaining a cult following of sorts.
The stakes are high from the jump, with a very limited amount of time for Ethan and his team to find a way to beat the Entity, as well as stop its main acolyte, Gabriel (Esai Morales, laying the villain schtick on very thick), from enabling it further. Ethan’s oldest friends Benji (Simon Pegg) and Luther (Ving Rhames) are back, along with new allies in former enemy Paris (Pom Klementieff) and Degas (Greg Tarzan Davis).
Also returning is Hayley Atwell’s pickpocket extraordinaire, Grace. For anyone still waiting forAtwell to get her second chance as Captain Carter, watching her in action here will certainly scratch the itch. She and Cruise also have great chemistry, which helps to ground the action in personal stakes. As it has always been, Hunt cares more about keeping his team safe than saving the world (although both those things usually go hand-in-hand), and this is especially true for Grace.
Along with Hunt’s team, who all turn in great performances, the supporting cast is a murderer’s row of character actors who are just making an absolute meal of their dialogue. Nick Offerman, Holt McCallany, Charles Parnell, Janet McTeer, and Mark Gatiss are all excellent as the president’s inner circle, using their subdued to bordering-on-broad performances to heighten the tension in each moment. Then, of course,Angela Bassett is bringing her A-game(when isn’t she?) as the aforementioned POTUS. Of course, Henry Czerny’s Kittredge and Shea Whigham’s Briggs are also back to make Ethan’s job harder. And just when it seems like they can’t fit in any more talent, Katy O’Brian (Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Love Lies Bleeding) and Sydney Cole Alexander (Severance) show up in small roles.
The two standouts among the supporting cast, however, areTed Lasso’s Hannah Waddingham(who buries her British accent as a stiff-jawed Naval Admiral) andSeverance’s Tramel Tillman(who brings the same playful but not-playing-around energy to his role as a submarine captain). These two are such a joy to watch, even if their characterizations don’t get any deeper than their dedication to fighting the good fight. It also would have been nice to get more of Waddingham on screen, but the way the story moves doesn’t leave a lot of room for anyone except Cruise.
The way these characters speak about the potentially world-ending situation they are facing is riddled with clichés. In fact, the movie is filled with things that in the hands of less talented and passionate creatives would make audience’s eyes roll, but here they just add to the pace, energy, and fun of the story (there’s a literal ticking clock on the wallof the situation room, for example).Final Reckoningalmost revels in all of this, and its earnestness is what makes it all work. That extends to the movie’s humor, which is abundant and used smartly to accent the action, endear the characters, and keep the story moving. Sometimes, as in an early jailbreak scene, there doesn’t even need to be any dialogue to make you laugh, just facial expressions.
The action here is breathtaking. Cruise has always been a master at putting himself in real danger in order to get the best result, andFinal Reckoningdoesn’t see him slowing down at all. What really makes all of the action work, and may be the movie’s real secret weapons, is the editing.Final Reckoning’s cross-cutting is almost magical, seamlessly blending two to three separate sequences together and escalating each of them simultaneously, while also tying the stakes of each scene to one another. The only exception isa claustrophobic underwater sequencethat hits on multiple phobias (tight spaces, the deep ocean, submerged machinery) and plays out all on its own with a deep, dread-inducing score.
Despite there being so much to like inFinal Reckoning, the breakneck pace of the story and the nature of tying up an entire series of movies may not leave everyone satisfied. The editing is rife with callbacks to previous entries, and the fractured storytelling which cuts back to earlier moments, especially in the first act, can seem a little bit messy at times.Final Reckoningalso does away entirely withthe espionage and spycraftthat helped to defineMission: Impossiblein its earlier incarnations. There’s nothing comparable to the Black Vault heist from the first movie, where the most important element was complete silence. Even the series' iconic masks are used only briefly and then never seen again. Anyone hoping for a spy movie might be left wanting on that front, but it by no means makesFinal Reckoninga lesser product.
Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoningis a triumph. It is nothing less than a pitch-perfect sendoff for the movie series that helped to make Tom Cruise something more than just a movie star. Its blend of both spectacle and storytelling should set the bar higher for other action blockbusters, but it would be hard to match anything that has been done in these movies over nearly three decades. Their best sequences are often imitated, but never duplicated. It remains to be seen if this is trulythe lastMission: Impossiblemovie ever, but as audiences have come to know, even titles with the word ‘Final’ in them don’t necessarily mean it’s the end. The mission is only over if we choose to accept it.
Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoningopens in theaters on May 23rd.
