Directed by: Christopher McQuarrie
Written by: Christopher McQuarrie and Erik Jendresen
Run Time: 2 hours 50 minutes

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Tom Cruise has been running across our cinema screens as IMF agent Ethan Hunt for almost thirty years now. And the franchise’s latest instalment, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, doesn’t let us forget it, referencing as many of his earlier missions as possible, despite predominately acting as a direct sequel to the previous series outing, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023). Yet its insistence on looking back is the first clue that after all the mileage Cruise and co have accumulated, the franchise has perhaps finally run out of steam.

Still on the hunt for assassin Gabriel (Esai Morales) and the evil artificial intelligence known as the entity from the previous film, Ethan and the gang must go to extreme lengths to stop their plans for world domination. Meanwhile, the entity has already taken control over several countries nuclear weapons plunging the world into a state of chaos and panic. Running out of options, Ethan must convince President Erika Sloane (Angela Bassett) to give him permission for his most daring mission yet.

The problem is, they talk about this plan for at least the first hour of the film. Act one is just exposition, and worse still is the way in which the script attempts to connect the dots between all the previous films like they all have to be relevant to what’s happening now. It’s a desperate attempt to make audiences care about anything going on here, but instead reminds them of all the franchises’ better instalments, ones they’d most certainly rather be watching than this. But remember, the stakes are higher than ever, the film so unconvincingly and repeatedly stresses. Yet, The Final Reckoning is so concerned with being an elevated version of itself that it forgoes all the fun and cool that made its predecessors such electrifying cinema.

In an effort to add to this intended spectacle the cast is at its biggest too, but sadly it’s far from its best. By now the series has collected an unnecessary amount of supporting characters, several of whom most audiences members would likely struggle to identify or even name. Despite their enthusiasm Hayley Atwell, Pom Klementieff and Greg Tarzan Davis are dealt this specific hand, fading into the overstuffed ensemble as much as they try to stand out.

It’s telling that the most compelling turn comes not from one of Ethan’s main team but instead a brilliant Angela Basset, who reprises her role from series highlight, Mission: Impossible Fallout (2018) as newly promoted President Sloane. She makes what could have been a generic, throwaway role into something far more engaging, as watching her deliberate on her course of action as a world leader is far more thrilling than anything Ethan or his team does.

It’s actually quite remarkable, especially considering the franchise’s reputation within the genre, that the action throughout The Final Reckoning is so unforgivably dull. The first hour is just a collection of unmemorable fist fights. While the second act delivers an underwater heist that the characters spend longer talking about than actually carrying out. The sequence is filmed well, but by the time it arrives the boredom of waiting for it has squandered any chance of it becoming compelling. Admittedly, the finale biplane chase is the high point of this instalment’s action – literally – but ultimately it’s just a lesser version of the spectacular helicopter sequence from the far superior Fallout finale. When the most rousing moment of your *checks watch* nearly three-hour long action movie is the theme music kicking in over the end credits, you know you’ve got a problem.

However, this outing was doomed from the start, because serving as the second part to the deeply uninspiring Dead Reckoning meant it was always going to struggle. A faceless AI is just about the most unexciting choice for an action villain possible, and while the sentiment of Cruise – Hollywood’s poster boy for the power of cinema – fighting against a very real threat to how movies are now being made can be appreciated to a certain degree, it just doesn’t make for an exhilarating on-screen dynamic, something the series has proven itself capable of achieving many times before.

Apparently, gone are the days of scene-stealing villains like Philip Seymour Hoffman as the unrelenting Owen Davian or Henry Cavill and his reloading fists as henchman John Lark. As Esai Morales’ Gabriel, the physical villainous alternative to the AI entity in The Final Reckoning, offers absolutely none of the thrills or theatrics needed to become a Mission: Impossible MVP. Instead, much like the film as whole, he’s so profoundly devoid of character and originality that he fails to make any kind of discernible impression, and he’s had two movies to do so.

Ironically then, it wouldn’t be a surprise if The Final Reckoning was revealed to be a product of AI itself. Its over reliance on what has come before it has made it a shell of its former self, taking Mission: Impossible from one of cinema’s most exhilarating franchises, to one of the most exhausting.

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Star Rating: ★ ★

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