Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning Dir: Christopher McQuarrie (13th Floor Film Review)
In Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, Tom Cruise outruns logic, gravity, and the concept of editing whist simultaneously evading the wardrobe department. Between topless Tom in mortal peril and twists that go nowhere, this one is more ego-flex than sustained thrill ride.
Starring: Tom Cruise, Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg
There is no shortage of stunning shirtless stunts (try saying that three times fast) including underwater shenanigans in the Baltic Sea and the pièce de resistance, a brilliantly executed and vertigo inducing scene involving two bi-planes and a spot of death-defying wing walking.
There’s even a very cool fighter plane scene that pays homage to Cruise’s iconic Top Gun performance that should draw an affectionate cheer of recognition from theatre goers.
At 62, Cruise is still insistent on doing his own stunts, which is impressive but also perhaps a little self-indulgent considering the insurance liability that the studio must carry every time he puts himself in harm’s way. The anxious gasps heard in theatres during the big budget action scenes may well be coming from the studio’s accountants as much as the paying audience.
Those thrilling moments aside, some scenes are, frankly, a bit weird – for example Hunt’s underpants-only work out and shower scene during which he is lasciviously observed by a comedically pervy Russian submarine crew, that feels as though it should be both an HR violation and an out-take from the 1991 classic giggle-fest, Hot Shots.
Added to this a scene where our hero is apparently revived from a hypothermic coma (avoidable if he had put some clothes on) by Hayley Atwell’s boobs. It just all feels a bit, dated and gratuitous.
It is obvious throughout, that Tom is in full (Cruise) control here.
The Final Reckoning is very much a one-man glory flick. Certainly, Ethan Hunt has a “team,” but they mostly exist for the purposes of gazing, ahem, down, in awe at their hero and waiting for him to come out with his next brilliant utterance.
When they are separated from the object of their worship, they mostly appear a tad discombobulated and confused. Like a group of well-meaning interns on a team building exercise whose boss has left them to get on with it and accidentally pocketed the key to the escape room on his way to the pub.
The first 10 minutes mostly consists of a series of flashbacks to Tom being awesome in Mission: Impossible one through seven which feels self-indulgent and adds to the extended runtime without adding much to the film itself. The exception being a nifty piece of character linkage back to the very first movie.
It doesn’t help matters that the overarching antagonist here is a piece of self-aware rogue AI called The Entity, which is capable of penetrating cyber-security and predicting probable futures – so honestly, it’s already one step ahead of Ethan Hunt, and if it’s truly self-aware it’s also got quite a leg up on Tom Cruise.
Whilst playing into the whole “AI is going to take over the world” theme is certainly topical, unless you are a creative (or a film reviewer) it all feels a bit too detached to be edge-of-your-seat threatening to the ongoing existence of life as we know it.
The Entity has recruited Esai Morales’s terrorist Gabriel to assist in its diabolical bid for world domination. Unfortunately, Gabriel is just…not really that menacing, coming across as the villainous equivalent of being savaged by a wet mop. He appears more like a petulant child not invited to a birthday party, than the kind of scenery-munching villain that an undertaking of this operatic scale deserves.
The Final Reckoning is currently sitting on 81% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, which is by no means bad – but it is the lowest score for the franchise since 2006.
Yes, there are incredible stunts. But beneath the thinly drawn plot and underdeveloped secondary characters lies a film that feels more like a vanity project than a thrill ride.
The whole enterprise just feels a bit bloated and flabby – which cannot be said for the leading man. While I may mercilessly mock the fact that The Final Reckoning is more Top Off, than Top Gun, there is no denying that the man of the 2 hours and 43 minutes is still looking pretty darn good.
Just ask that Russian submarine crew…
PS: Shoutout to Simon Pegg because I love him, and because he also gets to take his shirt off (albeit relatively briefly) in this one. His character, Benji Dunn, is clearly in his “hot tech guy” era, and more power to him!
Jo Barry
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is in cinemas now. Click here for tickets and showtimes.
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