Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning

Christopher McQuarrie and Tom Cruise close out the Mission Impossible series with this epic film in which Ethan Hunt and his team look to stop the AI villain of the last film from starting a global catastrophe,

Spoilers below:

I do not think this film is the best of the series, due to a murky antagonist, but it is definitely a worthy entry with the sum of the parts exceeding the whole.  I have decided to describe the pros and cons of the film and then will give a quick overall review at the end.

Things I liked:

McQuarrie gives Luther gets a heroic send off.  First he creates the poison pill to disable The Entity and then disarms a bomb in his final moments.  The dialogue between Ethan and Luther is touching, and while the situation is overly contrived (and I doubt Gabriel would say really use a bomb that would destroy London when he needs Ethan-who is in London-alive).  It is evident from Luther’s IV that he is possibly dying already (did creating the poison pill somehow come at the cost of his health?) but I think this is unnecessary. Ving Rhames gives the character a lot of dignity as always.   

While I was initially disappointed to learn that Lorne Balfe, who did such a fabulous job on the scores for Fallout and Dead Reckoning, did not return, the score by the team of Max Aruj and Alfie Godfrey is exciting and uses a lot of variations of the original Lalo Schifrin theme. The track when the team is fighting in the Donloe’s house intercut with Ethan’s fight on the submarine is superb.

Paris’ move from bad to good without losing her killer personality works well, as does the fact that she almost never speaks a word in English but understands it (and Ethan and Benji also speak French).

Briggs’ reveal as Jim Phelps’ son explains his obsession with capturing Ethan in the last film.  Shea Whigham is strong as always in a much smaller role this time.  The wordless moment of reconciliation works better than it should (why would Briggs have his gun out as I doubt he is planning to shoot Ethan, especially in front of Kittridge) because the actors are so committed and the poignant score.  Cruise gives Ethan a moment of release.  In the prologue Ethan, wearing a guard’s mask, fights Briggs and like when Ethan fought his father, is getting the worst of it.  The Phelps boys are tough.  

A secondary benefit of Briggs being Phelps’ son allows the filmmakers to set straight the betrayal of the tv series hero.  Fans of the show did not like that Phelps was turned into a villain but the righteous Jr. allows a more heroic Jim Phelps to be a part of IMF.  However powerful it is supposed to be when Briggs says “It’s my name now” is undercut by the fact that he has been using a different name.  Also, the idea that Briggs was thinking of killing Ethan goes against his principles of not liking Ethan because he disobeys orders.

The fight scenes are all intense and well edited with good stunt work (there are a lot of flips and somersaults during the fights in this film).  Ethan, still extremely fit, is over 60 and sometimes needs help to defeat younger opponents.  But the other characters get a lot of good fights in too but Benji as usual also almost always loses.  

Many reviews noted that the film does not really take off until the second hour.  The director and editor Eddie Hamilton said they initially structured the film with a nonlinear narrative in part to disguise this but it tested poorly.  I disagree.  While there is no big setpiece to rival the single take free fall from Fallout or the airport sequence from Dead Reckoning, there is a fight, a foot chase, Ethan’s race to save Luther (watching Cruise sprint across Westminster Bridge in London at night is a visual treat), Ethan’s arrest, and his big scene with the president and the scene in the coffin with The Entity.  The first hour sets up the rest of the film and I was anything but bored even if the bigger sequences all occur in the second and third acts.

The staging of Ethan beating two henchmen to death with a hammer and butcher knife offscreen while Hayley Atwell’s Grace watches, comically horrified and needing to recover, is masterful.  It is a little reminiscent of a far more disturbing offscreen murder Cruise’s character commits in War of the Worlds.  McQuarrie and Eddie Hamilton pick the aftermath of this moment to start the titles as the audience relaxes and then scene picks right back up with Gabriel’s escape from Ethan. 

I like the fluid nature of the team.  As the film started I expected the team to comprise of Ethan, Grace, Luther and Benji.  By the end it was Ethan, Grace, Benji, Degas, Paris, and Mr. And Mrs. Donloe.

William Donloe was collateral damage from Ethan’s robbery of the vault in the first Mission film and just for reporting it he was the victim of Kittridge’s cover up.  Kittridge’s line about shipping Donloe to Alaska is one of the funniest in the series and the audience felt bad for him while also laughing at the line (which Henry Czerny delivered so deliciously).  But McQuarrie treats Donloe respectfully, making him a legend at the CIA and showing him just as focused, not at all cynical about his fate and happily married to an Inuit woman.  McQuarrie even takes it a step further and through action shows that Donloe learned her language instead of his wife speaking to him in English.  Lucy Tulugarjuk is effortlessly charismatic as Tapeesa, Donloe’s wife.  She has few lines but her eyes have an incredible spirit and she appreciates being with a man of Donloe’s character.  Tapeesa also seems to be a pilot as she is in the cockpit during the flight to South Africa and Degas, who had been piloting a plane earlier, is in the back with the other characters (perhaps there is a cut scene where Degas put the plane on autopilot).  McQuarrie puts Donloe and Kittridge together and if McQuarrie were just giving fan service Donloe could have said something nasty to Kittridge, but he actually stays true to Donloe’s character and immediately politely introduces Kittridge to his wife.  If there was ever an example of how effective kindness can be, Donloe personifies it.  Rolf Saxon’s beard suits the environment and also shows the passage of time (there are a lot of clips of him in the CIA vault in the first film).

The tone in the climax when Grace, Benji, and Paris are working to prep the server while also managing Benji’s gunshot wound is perfectly calibrated.  It is fun to have Benji instruct Grace all the technical information while telling Paris how to treat the wound.  There is the expected tension but a surprising amount of humor as Paris refuses to let him fall asleep.  In the audience we know he might die but I was less surprised that he survived.

I was glad to see Ethan work with the government this time as he far too often is on the run from them while working his missions.  I especially enjoyed seeing Ethan team up with the Navy although at first seeing Tom Cruise on an aircraft carrier but not as Maverick was an adjustment.  One moment that is not discussed as much is Ethan’s jump into the Bering Sea (in the Northern Pacific Ocean near the Alaska-Russia border).  It is brief but terrifying as the grey environment and the choppy water make it clear that Ethan will either drown or freeze to death promptly, though fortunately he had already been spotted by the divers and they appear within about 12 seconds. 

The 20 minute sequence with Ethan on the Sevastopol is haunting and isolating.  The film builds up the training and effort required to make such a dive and McQuarrie and Eddie Hamilton wisely do not cut away to any outside activity which sustains the tension.  The submarine is dark and Ethan probably did not plans for the submarine to fall.  The helmet Ethan is wearing lets us see his face which keeps us connected to him though it probably is not the most practical design for this type of diving.

When the Sevastopol was destroyed at the start of Dead Reckoning I expected Ethan might end up having to visit it so this was well set up.

Grace’s rescue of Ethan is touching and their scene in the pod afterwards is intimate without being romantic (it would have had a very different vibe if Degas were the one to save Ethan).  The pod has warm lighting and looks a little heavenly.  Tapeesa’s look from above gives the scene a nice button (and clarifies that Ethan and Grace are not about to have sex in there).

The Arctic scenes (filmed in the northern part of Norway) are another new setting for a Mission movie and while we are denied an extended sequence focusing on the team managing the environment (in part because Ethan is not there for most of it) I still appreciated the opportunity to see something different.  I wish we could have seen more of the sled dogs but I liked the visual of two very capable women handling them.

The biplane sequence (set and filmed in a part of the world I also have not seen much of in movies) is one of the most audacious spectacles I have ever seen.  I watched this with the full knowledge that both men (and a camera crew) were on those planes doing incredible maneuvers while trying to tell a story and could not believe how bold they were to do something so dangerous.  The final stunt, in which Cruise filmed himself free falling while one of his two parachutes CAUGHT FIRE still has me gasping in disbelief.  Interestingly although it was the closing sequence of this film (and the series) it was filmed first.  I remember when I heard the film had wrapped I was relieved to hear that Cruise had survived.

Angela Bassett’s Erika Sloane is the perfect returning character to be president. If we ever were to see the president, this is the film to bring her into it.  Erika is a strong leader and yet her past experience with Ethan in Fallout allows her to give him the benefit of the doubt since he came through for her before.  McQuarrie introduces her early by having her give the mission briefing.

The reveal that the Rabbit’s Foot, which was an undefined MacGuffin in Mission Impossible III, is an early source code for the now sentient Entity is a nice and believable thread.

Henry Czerny’s Kittridge has a smaller role than in Dead Reckoning but his character is always well used.  Kittridge always has his own agenda and does not like or dislike Ethan, but uses him as needed.  There is a neat edit when he deliberately opens a binder with Ethan’s profile and then Hamilton cuts to a roomful of Cabinet members and senior military officers reading it.

Benji does not reveal that he has been shot until Ethan has left to pursue Gabriel as he does not want Ethan to be distracted.

Cruise does some of his best work as Ethan in this film.  Ethan suffers a terrible loss and is carrying an enormous burden but carries on.  

Things I didn’t like:

Donloe absolves Ethan (who was indirectly responsible for his relocation to Alaska) using almost exactly the same language that Julia used in Fallout. Essentially his life was changed permanently due being in proximity to Ethan but he is happier for it.  This is nice but the dialogue is too on the nose.  Also, Donloe never commented that Ethan’s team in the first film gave him a stomach flu which was not very nice.

The film twists itself to make the stunt sequence make sense.  Gabriel mentions that he has two biplanes and that one is a backup.  Would he really go to the trouble of bringing along an extra biplane?  It obviously was needed so Ethan could chase him but surely McQuarrie or co-writer Erik Jendresen could have thought of another reason.

The Entity is creepy but the film still needs a human antagonist and the use of Gabriel was confusing.  Gabriel believed he could control the Entity but despite Esai Morales’ best efforts Gabriel’s agenda did not make sense and it always felt like he was a human representation of The Entity.  I think the film might have worked better if Gabriel was the main villain with an agenda and The Entity was a threat under Gabriel’s control rather than the ill-defined partnership we have here.  The Entity’s abilities are a little too vague and the threat is too big.  The idea that the entire world would start firing nuclear weapons at each other if a few people cannot complete a task is unimaginative.  The stakes of a film does not need to be the existence of humanity to hold interest.  Mission Impossible and Rogue Nation were both very successful just using a list as a MacGuffin. 

The climax, while exciting and well edited, follows a lot of the same beats as the climax to Fallout.  In both films Ethan sneaks onto a helicopter/plane, fights with the bad guy(s) on board, takes control of it to then have a duel with someone on the other helicopter/plane who has a device that Ethan needs to reach to stop a nuclear explosion in conjunction with his team disarming a device on the ground.  Ethan eventually ends up on the other helicopter/plane in a deadly struggle to get ahold of the device which he gets in just the nick of time, holding it in his mouth.  It was suspenseful in Fallout, but this time, while the stunts are even more impressive, it feels a little like MaQuarrie is following an established playbook.

Ethan’s old girlfriend Marie was set up in the last film but his relationship with her (and why Gabriel killed her) is member explained.  McQuarrie explained that the plot thread was dropped because he felt that the extra year between the release of Dead Reckoning and Final Reckoning (they were originally supposed to be released only one year apart) would dance caused the audience to forget about Marie.  I think they never should have included her in the first place if they were not going to explain her purpose.  

While I occasionally like seeing flashbacks to old adventures in a series I think they went a little too far here.  Nearly every time something from the older films is mentioned (particularly the first film) we see a flashback which is not something they have done in the past.  During Erika’s briefing there are so many that it feels like they are showing off how many great stunts Cruise has done.  

Overall I like the final scene of the team reuniting in Trafalgar Square and the music is moving while still optimistic (it feels like they are saying goodbye, but just for now) but it plays very similarly to the closing of Ghost Protocol where Ethan trades a look with Julia from afar.

Does anyone outside the team think to ask what has happened to The Entity?  Since cyberspace was not destroyed would not someone suspect that Ethan might be hiding it?  Ethan hands the Podkova to Kittridge who looks at it curiously but asks no further questions.  

Ethan clearly used something that looked like cyanide to get Gabriel to release him but what was it?

The team’s plan to find Ethan in the ice at exactly the right time without ever speaking to him about it feels highly unlikely.

We see the world briefly experience a blackout but I wonder if anyone was hurt or killed (for example did a plane full of passengers suddenly fall from the sky)?

Ethan has needed to be revived three times now in the series by a beautiful woman.  I think this is an overuse of the same plot device.  Fortunately the women all care a lot for him.

McQuarrie borrows the idea from Fail Safe where a president offers to destroy an American city to avoid retaliation from other countries after bombing them but the dialogue clumsily never identifies the city (in Fail Safe it was New York).

Final Reckoning has some excellent filmmaking and character beats but I feel the plot is too expansive for its own good and The Entity and Gabriel are not used as well as they could have been.  These films are famously designed around their action sequences and written on the fly.  While McQuarrie and Cruise have gotten away with this approach in the past it does not quite land here.  

Mission Impossible: Final Reckoning is worth accepting but I think this is a good point to end the series. ***