As we are told multiple times during the latest (and ‘final’) entry in the big-screen Mission Impossible franchise juggernaut, ‘timing is everything…‘. That may be the case, but time and timing might be the real enemy here.
In a film where the end is nigh-on three hours of running and jumping time, we have a join-the-dots narrative and consistently treated to cliff-note level flashbacks of previous MI instalments (and bizarrely to possible flash-forwards) to the degree that it’s impossible not to start noticing the physical and narrative stretch-marks that the march of time has delivered. There’s a constant sense of going through the motions, a story built around patting itself on the back for the cinematic impact the franchise undoubtedly had on the size of stunts in ‘blockbusters’ in general.
This final Mission deserves mighty applause on a technical level, but it simply outstays its welcome, a testosterone-fuelled souffle of stunts and lip-service to lack of real consequence rather than the banquet of ballistics acting as the crutch on which it leans. Timing is everything, but it also waits for no man and now is the time to take its leave before the self-destructing fuse is reduced to a mere fizzle…
Logic has never been a cornerstone of the concept but here the result is something that feels (ironically) as if it’s written by AI, at best a tribute act to the band’s greatest hits disguised as a big-budget but over-extended and seats-available farewell tour. Fine, there’s a nod to the fact that the characters have had a lifetime of service and countless disavowed dangers and that this could be their last roll-call, but the film refuses to reflect that interesting element, with a super-computer story that requires them to be just as effective as they were in their prime, negating the passage of that time. The Mission Impossible films have heavily-relied on OTT spectacle, but even by that standard, Ethan Hunt is no longer James Bond 007 fighting THRUSH or SPECTRE, he’s John Connor fighting Sky-Net. It’s like War Games suddenly pivoted, deciding it would rather use its budget be The Terminator.
And I hate to say this, but this is the first film in the series in which Tom Cruise is starting to look noticeably ‘too old for this shit’. Now, let me clarify that. Don’t get me wrong, for a man impossibly in his sixties he’s still in finer shape than I have ever been or could hope to be. He’s a proven, fine actor when given rich material to play off and also able to anchor ambitious (if unbelievable) action outings in an almost unique, unprecedented way. He has a well-known commitment to giving it all to projects he chooses, both physically and mentally and to a degree that arguably borders on reckless and an insurance-apocalypse, but may have elevated the art of stunt-work more than any one performer of the last four decades. (With stunts hopefully about to be recognised as a worthy Oscars category, Cruise and Co have gone a long way into making that happen). He’s got years, nay decades of acting outings ahead of him too. On a basic level he’s almost as famous for his inclusivity on set, valuing everyone from the director to the lunch-server at craft services. Sure, he’s weathered some personal controversies about his religious beliefs and practices, but almost everyone who has ever met him speaks in glowing terms about his charisma.
But… let me blunt about Hunt. It’s not the level of a grey-haired Connery’s return to 007 for Never Say Never Again nor William Shatner oldly taking Captain Kirk beyond retirement, but seeing Cruise running full tilt across Westminster Bridge gets an A for effort, yet doesn’t have the shock and awe factor it once did. If you’ve recently watched the previous outing – and you need to, to keep sense of things – it’s quite astonishing how Cruise’s features have changed in just two years of downtime (and in only a matter of weeks in-universe narrative). It gives me no joy to say it, but despite the demands of the story, Cruise/Hunt veers between scenes where he’s holding his own, to suddenly looks weathered and tired throughout. There’s an argument that this is done on purpose, to show the sheer cost of a life of world-saving, but you can’t seek to talk about the wears and tears of longevity in the quiet moments and then simply pretend they don’t apply for the sake of every other action scene.
I’ve often felt the film series, however glossy and entertaining in the moment, was Mission: Impossible in name only. The classic series was about getting in and out of espionage-heavy situations in amazing and convoluted ways but with the villains never quite sure what hit them or even if they’d been hit at all. The films quickly dispensed with that subterfuge notion , literally killing off a whole Impossible Missions team in the first act of the first film and, perhaps unforgivably, dirtying the name of the series original mentor Jim Phelps. From then on it was really a Tom Cruise vehicle for him to indulge his death-defying stunts and if latter entries have given us a return to more of a team (Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg etc), it’s still been a case of blowing things up in new and interesting ways rather than being sneaky.
Mission Impossible: Final Reckoning (originally supposed to be Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning – Part Two) may now have a slightly abridged title, but in every other way it is a bigger, wider, longer film, yet not a smarter one. It furrows its brow, girds its loins and strides around trying to be ‘epic’ – and on the page it probably was, though reshoots and editing have clearly diluted rather than refined the finished product. Despite the high-stakes what actually makes it to the screen seems self-indulgent lip-service to Armageddon and despite great backdrops, it feels remarkably uneven and inconsistent. In an effort to provide an avalanche of familiar faces, it loses a sense of focus with too many moving parts that don’t make a convincing whole. Be it on land, in the skies, deep underwater or walking through fire (all elements getting equal billing), the globe-trotting set-pieces consistently outstay their welcome and are too often resolved because of a ‘with a bound he was free’ solution and with a suspiciously loose through-line.
The first half-hour of the film has some of the most truly bland ‘Previously on…‘ exposition ever delivered in an action movie as people sit around and remind us what characters have done to get us here – perhaps not helped by the amount of time between the previous film and this outing. Even the most committed Impossiphile will likely have forgotten where we were and who we were with. Pop-Quiz, hotshot: There’s the Entity, a super-computer that’s dangerously close to achieving full-on sentience and going full Sky-Net against our heroes and so Cruise and Co. have to retrieve a computer virus that will ‘kill’ it before nuclear war breaks out and destroys humanity. But the stakes quickly become artificial and abstract… The ‘Entity’ might be the reason everyone’s here and a digital countdown ticks away on convenient displays of a world map, but it seems to be working part-time on world domination as it disappears for most of the movie into background noise and motivation. Suddenly, Ethan Hunt is humanity’s ‘Chosen One’ – a reference the film delivers without even cracking a smile.
If the ever-up-for-it Cruise is suddenly a little craggy, the rest of the line-up – like the script – are often merely going through the motions with the women faring the worst. Hayley Atwell, cat-nip as Peggy/Captain Carter in the MCU is reduced to little more than eye-candy here. She was set-up as a world-class pickpocket in Dead Reckoning, but with the exception of one hand-to-hand combat sequence, she spends more time looking adoringly at Ethan Hunt and, in one ridiculously bizarre scene gets to hang in sub-zero Arctic conditions wearing little more than a sports-bra and with McQuarrie zooming the camera into her cleavage. (Yes, Atwell was eight-months pregnant when they did some of the reshoots, which might explain why she’s not always in the thick-of-it, but that doesn’t explain the rest). Pom Klementieff deserves more screen-time, but after some interesting, fun scenes in Dead Reckoning, her ‘Paris’ is clearly window-dressing and reduced to dialogue that probably doesn’t reach triple digits. Pegg fairs better, not asked to do a great deal, but feeling the more organic of the team and bringing both charm and self-deprecating wit. Ving Rhames as Luther is reduced to a mainly bed-ridden role that makes you wonder if the actor himself was okay. The likes of prominent names such as Angela Bassett as President Erika Sloane, Henry Czerny as Kittridge, Janet McTeer as Walters, Holt McCallany as Serling and even the great Hannah Waddingham as Admiral Neely have little to do but look worried.
After the massive virtual build-up, the final act of the plot may reduce the previously all-powerful Entity to the off-screen threat of a glowing Nintendo and the climax comes down to that aforementioned ‘timing’ factor – or, perhaps more accurately a convenient and quite literal deus ex machina (god from the machine) solution but it otherwise throws everything against the wall in one last hurrah and at least gives us a gloriously silly, almost cartoonish aerial biplane battle against Esai Morales’ Gabriel (cackling like Dick Dastardly on crack). But by then you’re still wondering if the film considers him or the Entity as the big bad and finds both wanting. You may have already started looking at the watch on your wrist rather than the countdown on screen.
As an action showreel, the over-all franchise is undeniably hard to beat, if only for its decades of tenacity and set-pieces. If that’s your sole yardstick then there’s much to enjoy here and the three hours may whizz by. But otherwise, it’s that conveyor-belt of continual stake-raising familiarity and a box-office driven by spectacle that breed frustration as you find yourself not caring as much as you need to; now wondering in real-time how shots were done (and how much the film must be paying in insurance fees) when you should simply be absorbed in the story itself. In that sense, this final Mission deserves mighty applause on a technical level, but it simply outstays its welcome, a testosterone-fuelled souffle of stunts and lip-service to lack of real consequence rather than the banquet of ballistics acting as the crutch on which it leans. Timing is everything, but it also waits for no man and now is the time to take its leave before the self-destructing fuse is reduced to a mere fizzle…
Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning hits VOD platforms on 19th August…
- Story7
- Acting7
- Direction8
- Production Design / VFX9
