It’s the finale of Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, the fourth film in the series, and superspy Ethan Hunt’s window to save the world is down to seconds. The bad guy du jour is no longer a threat (he just perished from a high jump off an automated multi-story parking lot) and Ethan (Tom Cruise) must slam the cancel button on a computerized nuclear launch briefcase to stop San Francisco being consumed in a mushroom cloud. Feeling cocky, he says “Mission accomplished!” before he hits the button — an uncharacteristic moment of hubris that’s immediately punished, as the cancellation does not work.
Panicked, he hits it again and again, while his team connects the right switches to provide him with a signal. With a second to spare, the cancellation button works, and a bruised-and-battered Ethan has once again stuck the landing, even if he waited really late to persuade us that hope wasn’t lost. This is basically the experience of watching The Final Reckoning; the longest, choppiest, and most frustrating chapter in the eight-film, 30-year series that, only when pressed, delivers the slick, propulsive thrills deserving of the franchise.
For about half of Ethan’s final hunt for “The Entity,” the all-consuming AI set on eradicating humanity first introduced in Dead Reckoning, director and co-writer Christopher McQuarrie and producer-star Cruise collide with all the missteps that have increasingly appeared in their four-film M:I collaboration: choppy editing, strained emotional sincerity, a hasty succession of quick scenes, each boasting a deluge of expository dialogue, a million characters bustling for room within a world-ending plot. In the superior Rogue Nation and Fallout, these missteps are mere blemishes, outstripped by the sterling interpersonal and inter-vehicular combat and a surgical approach to giving the audience all the information necessary to feel tension.
The Final Reckoning is a film of two halves: for over an hour, Ethan Hunt runs from room to room, encountering old friends and hesitant new allies, often sparring and negotiating with them to let him take down the Entity. It’s perhaps the low point for the series: a whistlestop tour of torture chambers, underground tunnels, security briefings, and tense military bases, the likes of which we’ve seen frequently in the previous seven films. This familiarity is pushed closer to tedium by The Final Reckoning’s insistent reminders of details from various past plotlines, complete with frantically cut clip reels. You could probably shave off 15 minutes from the runtime if you left every piece of pre-existing M:I footage on the cutting room floor.
For about 70 minutes, there are no clever sequences to be found, no knife’s edge, gadget-filled heists pulled off with the finesse of a watchmaker. There’s only discussing finicky stakes and logistics while Ethan Hunt, a man who keeps replacing his ex-wife with other brunette women, promises his friends he won’t let them lose their lives as he vows to murder a computer. The fact that this computer is his uncanny double — to Ethan and the Entity, probability means nothing in the face of their sheer will — is a constant, looming motif, but the tricksy, hyperactive presence the Entity had in Dead Reckoning is conspicuously absent in its sequel.
There are apocalyptic converts to the Entity’s credo who violently announce themselves hidden in plain sight to attack our heroes (a silly way to add more action), but aside from hackneyed TV footage of protests in the rushed opening minutes of the film and a gigantic map displaying the countries where the Entity has harnessed nuclear arsenals, the playful, scrappy fun of the omnipresent AI has turned into single-toned, serious-minded dread — leaving no room for the stunt-caper joy that Brian De Palma, Brad Bird, and McQuarrie (from about seven to 10 years ago) have brought out of the spy material.
With fun in short supply, The Final Reckoning leans lopsidedly on two major stunt sequences — one underwater, one up in the air — to which Cruise and McQuarrie give their all. Look for the entrance of Tramell Tillman and Katy O’Brien, as they signal when the film starts acting like a Mission: Impossible finale. Soon, Ethan is descending to inhuman depths to battle with a desolate Soviet submarine, and you’re struck by the McQuarrie’s sudden visual intuition: wide angles of the inescapable blue of Arctic waters and the tilting gravity of the sub’s innards render Ethan’s superhuman body as painfully slight and fragile. This midpoint feels like the purest distillation of the Reckoning project: Ethan navigating dialogue-free but sensory sequence with no human adversaries, but rather natural, mechanical, and technological forces threatening to crush him.
When the talking scenes return to set up the climax, they’ve got a welcome sense of urgency — aided, no doubt, by a literal ticking clock and a dramatic economy that reiterates exactly what needs to happen to stop things going south. Everyone has their own miniature mission; while Ethan’s airborne biplane duel embraces the most searing, soaring, and maximalist pleasures of McQ and Cruise’s core stunt ethos (i.e., try to end Tom Cruise, beautifully), pickpocket extraordinaire Grace (Hayley Atwell) is entrusted with a day-saving duty that’s so precise and delicate it will put a smile on your face while your heart is in your throat.
Yes, The Final Reckoning ends the Mission: Impossible series on a note of excitement, but it’s not the rigorously satisfying closer that the series deserves. Maybe it’s the best of a bad situation — the second part to a loony, muddled opening chapter, abiding by Cruise and McQ’s rule that every sequel must be more exhilarating while ignoring the clear parameters upon which the best Mission: Impossible movies were built. It has a great sense of scale, but a bad sense of pacing, tone, plotting, and drama — all the elements that fuse a great setpiece to an action film that’s more than the sum of its parts. Enough of The Final Reckoning is salvageable, and when it counts, it takes us on a bracing final ride. But it’s impossible to ignore the vast chunks that sit immobile and useless, like the felled Soviet submarine, at the bottom of the ocean, in dire need of being saved.
