‘Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning’ Review
The final addition to the Mission: Impossible series remains consistent with the rest of the franchise, boasting impressive live action stunts and a quest to save the world.
Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning is like a fine y-crafted bow on top of your favorite Christmas present. It complements it perfectly. This eighth and final entry in the franchise finely brackets an action-packed series that’s constantly pushed the envelope with high octane stunts and superb visual effects. This time, writer/director Christopher McQuarrie (Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning, Mission: Impossible - Fallout) and the last action hero Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt, IMF operative, attack the boundaries of cinema with IMAX technology and heart-pounding live action stunts.
In Mission: Impossible - Fallout, Hunt tells a delivery man, “I am the storm.” That’s the case in every Mission: Impossible film. Hunt will wreak havoc on those who get in the way of him accomplishing his mission or those who threaten his loved ones. In The Final Reckoning, Hunt not only performs mega-heroics but also displays some vulnerability and signs of mortality. He’s not just a whirlwind of fists and kicks. The tagline for The Final Reckoning is “Every choice, every mission, has all led to this.” The story is an ideal denouement for fans of the muscular series.
The movie opens, reintroducing omniscient digital menace The Entity. We go through a montage of Hunt’s adventures over the years, landing in the present day with him listening to the President of the United States, Erika Sloane (Angela Bassett), trying to coax him to turn over the coveted cruciform. He has other ideas. He has a date with destiny and his nemesis, Gabriel (Esai Morales), an emissary of The Entity. Luther (Ving Rhames) designs a poison pill for The Entity. It’s just a matter of getting to the original code of The Entity, which is buried in the Arctic Ocean in the Sevastopol.
Hunt has a new ally in Paris (Pom Klementieff), latest apprentice/love interest, Grace (Hayley Atwell), returns, and wiseacre Benji (Simon Pegg) holds down the team. While they often work together as a team and have some fantastic fight scenes, Hunt does a couple of dangerous missions solo with Gabriel or Eugene Kittridge (Henry Czerny) never far behind.
There are numerous Christian images and references in the Mission: Impossible series. In Mission: Impossible - Fallout, the Apostles were a terrorist organization. In Dead Reckoning and The Final Reckoning, there’s the cruciform key, a cross. In the bible, Archangel Gabriel is the messenger of God. This Gabriel is a messenger of the anti-God, or anti-Christ, The Entity. In The Final Reckoning, there’s one image of Hunt where he’s underwater and he looks like he’s in the womb, being born again. Hunt, a modern world Odysseus, is always challenged with saving the world, with the help of his friends, but this time he has to prevent Armageddon. No mean feat.
It’s regrettable that this is the last movie in the franchise, but also a relief. Cruise is fearless with his stunts and it’s nail-biting each time he does a seemingly impossible daredevil undertaking. There’s one sequence where Hunt hangs from a plane that’s shot at 8,000 feet in the air with 140 mph winds in IMAX Expanded Ratio Aspect, and it literally feels like you’re on a rollercoaster.
Tom Cruise and Christopher McQuarrie, who Cruise often affectionately calls “McQ,” are a dynamic duo who know how to create magic on the screen. Their love for the movies is evident in the detail and effort they put into the Mission: Impossible films and whatever films they do. The underwater scenes were riveting, made even more magnificent by cinematographer Fraser Taggart’s (Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning, Edge of Tomorrow) lucid views. The film clocks in at 2 hours and 49 minutes, but doesn’t feel this long. This film could have easily been overstuffed, but it isn’t because it stays true to its style and characters.
Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning is not without its flaws. Sometimes, the tech speak becomes problematic and bloated. There are also some slow spots in the middle. However, overall, Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning is a fun time at the movies and a heartfelt ending to a series that’s ingrained in pop culture history. Filmed for IMAX, there will be IMAX opening day fan events on May 22, then this Paramount Pictures release opens nationwide on May 23.
Sonya Alexander started off her career training to be a talent agent. She eventually realized she was meant to be on the creative end and has been writing ever since. As a freelance writer she’s written screenplays, covered film, television, music and video games and done academic writing. She’s also been a script reader for over twenty years. She's a member of the African American Film Critics Association and currently resides in Los Angeles.
