Mission Impossible – The Final Reckoning delivers the most intense moments of the franchise, and cements the emotional core of Ethan Hunt definitively. It convincingly portrays a story with truly world-ending consequences and vast impacts.
Directed by Christopher McQuarrie, the sees Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) take on one final mission. Hunt must destroy The Entity, a rogue government-created AI that has taken control of the world’s nuclear arsenals. To do so, he must retrieve the original source code, and infect the AI with a poison pill while preventing anyone else from trying to control it.
The Final Reckoning’s strength lies in its ability to distil Ethan Hunt’s thesis statement. As Rogue Nation tells us, “Ethan Hunt is the living manifestation of destiny”. And this film proves that. Cruise’s stoic performance completely convinces you that he’s the only person in the world who believes he can kill The Entity. While everyone else suffers the hubris of trying to control the AI, he’s unwaveringly in his belief that it should be destroyed. It’s this surety that cements this film as best understanding what makes Ethan Hunt as a character so compelling.
The scale of action filmmaking on show in The Final Reckoning is superb. McQuarrie and Cruise take this movie and elevate it to a truly herculean scale. The degree to which the stunts are all real, but also all enormously huge is truly impressive. It’s something that McQuarrie himself has said may genuinely ever be seen in a movie again. The financial expense, laborious time commitments, and the safety risks invovled all converge to make it something no director in their right mind would take on. From the pure absurdity of the plane gliding stunt, to the sheer dangerousness of lighting a parachute of fire 19 times, the size and seriousness of the stunts on display is unmatched.
The undeniable standout is an excruciatingly tense underwater sequence that stretches beyond 20 minutes without dialogue. Every moment feels breathless, as Cruise must navigate an enormous ship-wreck. McQuarrie shoots the scene impeccably, framing Cruise in scarily vast spaces as he travels across imposing wide shots of this underwater set they created.
Cinematographer Fraser Taggart returns from Dead Reckoning. He delivers impressive shots of the vast locations they visit across Iceland, South Africa and the United States. Scenic displays of the arctic and desert locations are stunning. Taggart is especially talented at making dynamic backgrounds for simple dialogue scenes. Even shots as plain as close-ups of Cruise having a conversation are visually intriguing, with high-contrast backgrounds of brightly-lit military compounds provide visual interest as the audience listens to exposition.
While Cruise delivers one of his strongest performances as Hunt, the supporting cast is somewhat underused than in previous films. Benji is less humorous than usual, as a result of the more serious tone. The franchise often toggles between subtle humour and more outright comedy, but this entry spends considerable time dealing with such dire consequence that there’s little room for jokes. Haley Atwell makes a strong return as Grace. Pom Klementieff is suave and fierce. And Ving Rhames delivers a moving and memorable monologue.
Billed as the final film in the franchise, McQuarrie and Cruise find multipl ways to truly deliver on the notion that “every mission has led to this”. Three seperate callbacks to previous films stand out. Two returning character is revealed to be from the first Mission Impossible, adding extra emotional weight. Another has a connection to the first Mission Impossible film, which feels less nuanced but leads to a thematically rich moment in the final scene. And most importantly, the macguffin MI: 3 is re-contextualised to relate to how The Entity was created. Abrams left The Rabbit’s Foot’s true purpose vague enough that McQuarrie is able to pick it up and tie it right back to the The Entity’s creation. It’s a clever moment that rounds out a franchise that rarely had deep connections between films given especially over such a varied and spaced out 30-year run.
Beyond delivering some of the best action filmmaking of all time, The Final Reckoning has something meaningful to say too. The core message of the film is deeply humanist. It champions humanist and progressive values throughout the script. Ethan Hunt is fiercly fighting for humanity over artificial intelligence. He advocates for denuclearisation over warfare. And he believes in the innate goodness of people working together through kindness rather than selfishness or a desire for power. It is the most overtly political film in the Mission Impossible franchise, and it’s good at it.
These political elements are drawn out carefully through the story. For instance, the main complication surrounding nuclear destruction results in a clever display of military game-theory. With the United States as the last country whose nuclear arsenal is free of The Entity’s control, they’re faced with the choice of shutting it down before The Entity gets to it, or striking other countries before The Entity strikes them. Here, Angela Basset’s POTUS character grounds the discussion with a stern and trusting weight to her performance. Though the resolution relies on the ultimately absudirty of Ethan Hunt achieving his impossible feats, the decisions made by trusting Hunt are the one’s that matter. McQuarrie advocates a pacific ideology based on trusting each other, rather than giving in to the uncertainty and fear that rogue technology and division can breed.
For a franchise that started with mostly breaking into facilities through air vents, The Final Reckoning exists on a different plane entirely. It is geographically vast, thematically rich, and genuinely convincing in telling a story with world-ending consequences. It’s not easy to deliver on the task of a world-ending threat without seeming trite or overblown. The performance, intricate script, and an adequate runtime to really let to sit and feel the consequences of such a serious mission make it feel truly real.
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Mission Impossible – The Final Reckoning releases in Australian cinemas on Saturday 17th May, and in the US on 22nd May.
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