Christopher McQuarrie | 2hr 50min
The end of a franchise as culturally dominant as Mission: Impossible is bittersweet. Bitter because Tom Cruise’s physics-defying dedication to practical stunts and spectacle has held the series up as a mainstay of action cinema through even its weaker instalments; sweet because, as thrilling as the ride has been, we know that both Tom Cruise and Christopher McQuarrie can thrive outside its familiar formula. Still, what The Final Reckoning lacks in deftness it makes up for in raw impact, unleashing a rousing conclusion to the nuclear threat posed by the rogue AI parasite from Dead Reckoning, and tying off plot threads that stretch all the way back to the very first film.
At its most cumbersome, McQuarrie drags his narrative through throwback montages and exposition, paying homage to everything that has led to Ethan Hunt’s final mission while establishing the extraordinarily high stakes at play. As much as he tries to sustain momentum through dialogue, the dense information dumps are transparent, serving only to link one set piece to the next and exorbitantly blow out the nearly three-hour runtime. It is especially disappointing given the extraordinary peril at hand – plain discussion does not serve to underscore the weight of human extinction fuelled by disinformation, civil unrest, and global paranoia. Instead, it is up to McQuarrie’s ingenious, heart-pounding action sequences to drive home The Final Reckoning’s daunting stakes, often intercutting between characters located nations apart.
This is a film built on deadlines after all, from the U.S. President’s 72-hour timeframe to launch nuclear warheads, to the bomb that gives Luther only minutes to save London. McQuarrie’s parallel editing expertly demonstrates the efficiency his exposition lacks, juxtaposing Hunt’s hand-to-hand struggle in a submarine against the icy tundra where his team fights Russian special forces, and using their hostile environments against them. Even more astounding is the film’s climax which spans Washington DC, a South African bunker of data servers, and an unconventional biplane dogfight, which sees Cruise climb from one aircraft to another mid-flight to hijack the controls. There is clearly a touch of Top Gun in this aerial sequence, but where that franchise would solely focus on its impressive manoeuvres, McQuarrie skilfully raises the urgency by tightly synchronising them with other moving parts of this time-sensitive mission.
When McQuarrie does slow down and stretch out the suspense though, his visual storytelling is no less effective, giving total attention to Hunt’s underwater heist of the Entity’s source code in an extended, dialogue-free sequence. The sunken submarine he must infiltrate to retrieve it is effectively one giant, hazardous set piece, holding weak defence against the immense water pressure outside its walls, as well as the deep crevice it is very gradually rolling towards. Inception’s rotating hallway is the clear inspiration here, constantly evolving the submarine’s interior terrain as gravity tilts and water pours in, while the muffled, groaning sound design intensifies with the gathering speed.
If there is a missed opportunity in The Final Reckoning at all, then it is the Entity’s lack of personal threat to Hunt and his team, especially after its ability to impersonate voices and manipulate radar signals proved to be fatal in Dead Reckoning. Instead, it is primarily occupied by its takeover of nuclear command centres across the world, while power-hungry terrorist Gabriel becomes a more tangible villain directly competing with Hunt for control over the deadly AI. The strength of the cast rather lies in our heroes, giving long-term teammates Luther and Benji fond farewells, while newer allies Paris and Grace carry over from Dead Reckoning and slot smoothly into the existing dynamic.
Not that we will necessarily see them integrate any further. Although Cruise and McQuarrie have definitively called The Final Reckoning the last in the series, this distinction is somewhat arbitrary, as the narrative itself only lightly commits to the end of Hunt’s journey. The doorway to future instalments is certainly there, but the ceiling for Mission: Impossible is only so high, and there may not be any better place for it to conclude than in this bombastic homage to the franchise’s history. We can only hope their word holds true – in an era increasingly reliant on digital artifice, The Final Reckoning stands as an overstuffed, operatic monument to what practical filmmaking can still achieve when pushed to its edge, and so utterly devoted to the impossible.
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is currently playing in theatres.
