Mission: Impossible -The Final Reckoning is a movie about the excruciating but not impossible goal of defeating A.I. -in a large-scale sense but in the film industry particularly. The Mission: Impossible movies have been for at least about a decade now metaphors for the filmmaking process and the movie industry itself; and in the spectre of at long last ending this series, Tom Cruise and director Christopher McQuarrie consciously chose to go out by devoting their two-part finale to addressing and taking down the biggest threat to movies of the modern era. A proud and hopeful statement in defiance of a dangerous technology that would butcher art and stunt creativity. Cruise, who has always valued authenticity and human spontaneity in making cinema and has become one of its most outspoken champions as a result, is very aware of what A.I. would take from the experience of both making and watching movies.
The point was made abundantly in Mission: Impossible -Dead Reckoning, but is even more bluntly communicated here, as some characters even become mouthpieces for various arguments in the A.I. discourse and on more than one occasion it feels like the audience is being addressed directly. But beyond this salient conversation, the movie still has to be intense and entertaining in a manner that succinctly proves its own point; and even make considerations for itself as an ending to this franchise that has been in motion for just shy of thirty years. An impossible mission indeed.
The film picks up where the last one left off, with Ethan Hunt and his rogue IMF team in pursuit of Gabriel (Esai Morales), the human liaison of the A.I. called The Entity that is now spreading over the world, gaining access to heavy nuclear arsenals it intends to ignite the apocalypse with. It soon becomes apparent the nature of Ethan’s last mission here: he must retrieve the Entity’s core module from a sunken submarine in the Bering Sea -it can then be infected and the Entity destroyed using a severe malware device developed by Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames). But Gabriel gets a hold of this ‘Poison Pill’, holding it hostage for his own plan to keep the Entity alive but taking over its source code, effectively allowing himself to rule the world in wielding it. And of course the U.S. government and its chief agencies are very anxious over their security vulnerabilities as well, going after Ethan and Gabriel alike with their own interests in controlling the Entity.
As indicative of the movie being a last waltz, there are several references and tie-ins to earlier entries in the series in a manner the Mission: Impossible films have never really entertained. There are returning characters, like Angela Bassett’s Erika Sloan, the CIA director from Fallout now President, and of course as in the last film Henry Czerny is back as Kitteridge, the antagonistic former IMF director from the first movie. But strangest is the return of Rolf Saxon as Donloe, a minor CIA analyst from the first movie who simply featured in that film’s signature stunt sequence. Additionally there is the reveal that Shea Wigham’s determined agent is in fact the son of Jim Phelps, the IMF leader-turncoat in the first movie (and also the protagonist of the original show), and that the core module for the Entity is actually the same macguffin Ethan was forced to retrieve in Mission: Impossible III, tying him -though loosely- to the Entity’s creation. Most of these connections are fairly arbitrary links to the past, with little real bearing on this mission or Ethan’s own characterization, even the one that seems to directly implicate him. The Donloe and Phelps beats especially feel like mere hollow easter eggs.
In addition to evoking these past movies, the film also repeats beats of its own plotting every so often when relevant, as though aware of how convoluted it is and making extra sure the audience can keep up. It’s done in short enough bursts and it works, but it still feels like a movie not trusting the strength of its own script -and indeed it isn’t an especially strong one in terms of its communication of exposition, faring far better on matters of enhancing stakes and building the gravitas of its situation -how incredibly dangerous this A.I. is and how Ethan Hunt/Tom Cruise is the only man to stop it, which he does of course through impressive death-defying stunts.
The stories of these movies always tend to revolve at least a little around an extreme set-piece or two usually concocted by Cruise himself. Here we are treated to the extended sequence of Ethan retrieving the core module deep underwater in an abandoned sub filmed in just about total silence as multiple spheres of tension escalate -whether it is the pressures in his suit and the ice cold temperatures, the labyrinthine interior that needs to be navigated, or the sub itself slowly rolling towards the edge of a continental shelf, giving Ethan a ticking clock to get the device and get out with less and less exit routes (he also needs to be rescued and put in a decompression pod almost immediately, while his team’s side of the plan we know is already going awry). It’s very effective, Cruise of course doing the whole of it practically, albeit in a clearly controlled environment. That isn’t the case for the other major action sequence that comprises his part in the film’s climax -a biplane dogfight with Gabriel high in the air over South Africa that eventually sees Ethan having to climb aboard, hang on, and commandeer it in mid-air. This is more of a classic Tom Cruise antic for these movies and is a good deal more thrilling, as the plane twists and turns and near-crashes several times while Ethan hangs on to a wing or a wheel.
Cruise's stamina remains unshakable, but as has been the case for the last several of these movies, it doesn't mean anything without the cohort behind him -the team and comradery that have been a critical heart of this series. Rhames and Simon Pegg are back for one last hurrah, with Pegg's Benji nicely coming to the end of an arc that sees him formally leading the team. Returning from the previous film are Pom Klementieff's renegade assassin Paris and Hayley Atwell's Grace, the sharp pickpocket who serves up considerable sexual tension with Ethan -both are delightful. Greg Tarzan Davis's Degas is also recruited onto the team rather suddenly, though isn't given enough opportunity to gel with the gang organically. Leaving a much stronger impression are Ethan's allies aboard a military submarine, played by Tramell Tillman and a scene-stealing Katy O'Brian. In contrast to these characters are the contrived collection of government figures, including Holt McCallany, Janet McTeer, and Nick Offerman -their drama with the President and a potential Armageddon playing out like an earnest Dr. Strangelove. I appreciate the efforts to interrogate the President's own ethics here in relation to her cabinet (and as an image of imagined functioning governance), but it comes across as tiresome and tame political intrigue, wasting a bunch of talented performers.
Their role is understandable however in the scheme of the movie's emphatic messaging. It is not just the artists, as represented by Ethan and co., but those with the levers of power that are under threat of A.I., even as they endeavour to reign it in or seek to control it for their own purposes. Several of the President's advisors are no different than Gabriel, they are just a little less megalomaniacal (in truth government executives would be way more so than a mere agent). But all suggestion that the Entity can be controlled are quickly put to bed by Ethan, vested with authority here as an avatar for the creative spirit, albeit translating as a near deification of Ethan's justness -Grace even insinuates he's a good enough person to be trusted with the power of the Entity. The trajectory of this sentiment, how seriously the film takes it, is a bit problematic by the end. Yet the principle that sticks is the same that propels the veracity of this very important fight against an algorithm.
Mission: Impossible -The Final Reckoning doesn't have the air of conclusiveness you might expect for what is the ending to a series of nearly three decades. Yes, it has some of that shallow stuff in the callbacks and clips, but with one significant exception pertaining to a major character, there is no air of finality to its resolution. But then, the Mission: Impossible series, with its looser continuity framework, perhaps doesn't demand that. Perhaps all this film needs is to be is one more thrilling impossible mission. And that is what it delivers on largely. It is not so tight or consistent in engagement as previous installments, there are caveats to its strengths, but it is still distinctly strong action filmmaking on its own terms. Mission accomplished.
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