Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning | review by Rafe McGregor

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, by Christopher McQuarrie (Paramount Pictures)

Better onthe big screen.

The cinematic experience has changed a lot… andI mean since the COVID-19 pandemic, not over my lifetime. Vue, which has beenmy local ‘provider’ for some time now, recently refurbished all of its cinemas sothat every seat is now what would have been called ‘luxury’ pre-pandemic. Thismust have cut the number of seats that can be squeezed into each theatresignificantly, but I suppose it’s good business as fewer and fewer people ventureforth from the comfort of their living rooms. At the same time (and probablyfor the same reasons) it has become increasingly difficult to find a cinema screeningwhat one wants to watch, as my three most recent choices reveal: MI8 (atmy local Vue, but only for a single week), Warfare (straight tostreaming as far as I can tell), and The Return (apparently releasedlast year, neither screening nor streaming in the UK).
By its eighth and final instalment, the MissionImpossible film franchise is firmly in the science fiction genre, with theantagonist of seven and eight (a single narrative divided into two parts) beinga sentient AI program called the Entity that has inspired its own death cult, membersof which have infiltrated various levels of America’s (and other nations’)governments and militaries. (Though perhaps the bit about members of a deathcult infiltrating the government isn’t quite science fiction if one reads thenews at the moment – I digress.) The franchise is of course based on the verysuccessful Mission: Impossible television series, which ran from 1966 to1973 and was revived for two seasons in the next decade. It was in fact lessthan a decade after this revival when the film series started as Mission:Impossible (MI1) was released in 1996. Since then, MI hasemerged as something of an American version of the James Bond franchise, withTom Cruise in the leading role of Ethan Hunt. Following a six-year hiatus atthe beginning of the century (between MI2 and MI3) there has beenan MI film every two to five years, a roll that even the pandemiccouldn’t break.
The running time of MI8 is 170 minutes andmy only real criticism of the film is that this is about 30 minutes too longand just a little too self-indulgent from Cruise (who is heavily involved inproduction), director Christopher McQuarrie, or both. For example, there issome very pedestrian exposition at the beginning that could easily have beenshaved off. The scene (or sequence, if you’re a filmmaker) is both too lengthy– an attempt to remind audiences of not only the events of MI7, but thatthis is the culmination of the whole film series (it includes flashbacks to allof the other films) – and pointless. Pointless because the plot is so complex(and implausible, but this is science fiction so I won’t quibble) that I’dcompletely lost track by the time the explanation ended, in spite of havingwatched MI7 relatively recently.
Cruise is now 62 and remains determined to show usthat with dedication and a few hundred million in the bank one can stay inpeak condition in one’s seventh decade, spending much of the film with hisshirt off (even in the Bering Sea – look it up on Google Maps). One thing thatdid strike me, though, was that for all of Cruise’s flexing, the franchise hasbecome very child friendly. It’s always been fun and full of over-the-topstunts, but MI1 and MI2 (the latter in particular) had scenes andthemes aimed at an adult audience. There is only one scene with extremeviolence in MI8, which all occurs offscreen, and when Cruise does gethorizontal with co-star Hayley Attwell (playing Grace, a former thief) it’s fora chaste cuddle in a decompression chamber. Which is fine, but the flashbacksto the earlier instalments reminded me that those films had a little moreappeal for grown-ups. Notwithstanding, if you’ve watched one or more of the firstseven, I recommend seeing how the story ends and, if you can find one screeningit, seeing that ending at the cinema. ***