After nearly three decades of impossible missions, Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt returns for what’s billed as the last Mission, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning. The movie tries to wrap up the story from Dead Reckoning Part One, but instead of ending the series on a high note, it’s a bloated and overly serious finale that loses sight of what made the franchise fun.
Two months after retrieving the special cruciform key that grants access to the sunken vault of the Russian sub where The Entity’s source code is located, Ethan Hunt has been hiding, not trusting any government or individual to control the Entity. Luther (Ving Rhames) has developed an electronic poison pill that could destroy The Entity, but its infiltration into cyberspace is so complete that destroying it could destroy the entire world’s infrastructure. Ethan has to reunite with his team, find the sunken sub, and retrieve the poison pill, stolen by Entity acolyte Gabriel (Esai Morales), before The Entity takes control of all the world’s nuclear arsenals and brings nuclear armageddon to the planet. At nearly three hours long, the movie drags with scene after scene repeating the same beats — characters reminding Ethan that he’s “the only one who can stop the end of the world” and that it’s his “destiny” to defeat the Entity. The tension gets buried under endless exposition and speeches, rather than the tight, thrilling pacing of Fallout or Ghost Protocol. The tone doesn’t help either, as it’s far too dour and self-serious, with little of the playful energy that made earlier Mission: Impossible movies so rewatchable. The humor and teamwork are mostly gone, replaced by heavy-handed moralizing about destiny and sacrifice. The heist structure, wacky gadgets, and mishaps during the action sequences were what made the previous M:I movies so fun, and most of that is missing in this entry. The Entity itself is also just a dull, abstract villain. It’s too powerful to feel threatening and too vague to be interesting. You can’t outthink or outfight an algorithm, and the movie never finds a creative way to make it work; it’s just characters saying how powerful and evil it is, with no real way to show it. Much like Dead Reckoning, the movie tries to make Gabriel the human face of the threat, but he disappears for a massive chunk of the movie, so long that you almost forget he was in it at all.
Being that this is the “final” movie in the franchise, there are some fun nods and references to the past, including an opening montage of some of the greatest hits, a scene where the President’s (Angela Bassett) security council runs down all of Ethan’s prior escapades in disbelief and characters that either appeared in previous movies, like a returning Henry Czerny as Kittridge, or characters that are revealed to be connected to characters from the past. The biggest thing for me was probably the return, sort of, of the Rabbit’s Foot from Mission: Impossible III, which was the most MacGuffiny plot device of the entire series, where you you didn’t even know what it does. It’s dumb but also kind of fun that they bring it back and tie it to The Entity and the larger plot.
The one true highlight is the biplane sequence, an absolutely jaw-dropping set piece that reminds you why Cruise is still the king of stunts. Unfortunately, it doesn’t show up until more than two hours in, and it’s the only moment that feels worthy of the franchise’s reputation. Ethan’s dive into the sunken Russian sub is also a strong sequence, more tense than action-packed, but incredibly shot with some fantastic visual flourishes. There are a few smaller sequences sprinkled throughout, so the first two hours aren’t devoid of action, but it just doesn’t have the genre-defining spectacle that we’ve come to expect from this series.
The 4K Blu-ray release comes as a three-disc set, including 4K and Blu-ray versions of the movie, and a separate disc for bonus features. The extras include behind-the-scenes featurettes, deleted scenes (though given the film’s length, it’s hard to imagine anything being cut), and a commentary track —pretty much the standard features you’d expect. The biplane featurette is only about five minutes long, which feels like a missed opportunity given the apparent effort that went into filming it. A deeper dive into the stunts would’ve made this release more satisfying. The other features are also extremely short and feel more like promo videos uploaded to YouTube than in-depth special features. There is some interesting information and you get to see some of the insane work that went into the two biggest sequences of the film, like building the biggest water tank ever made for the submarine sequence and then putting a 1,000 pound set rig into into, but I would have gladly sat down for a longer, documentary style feature going into the entire production of the movie.
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning looks and sounds excellent on 4K, but the movie itself is a slog. Aside from one standout sequence, it’s a slow, self-serious finale that forgets how to have fun and is a pretty disappointing end to one of the best action movie franchises. It’s necessary to watch if you want the conclusion to plot set in motion in Dead Reckoning, but I don’t think I will be returning to this one as frequently as other entries, if at all.
(We received a review copy of the 4K from Alliance Home Entertainment.)
