By Marc S. Sanders
The blessing behind Mission: Impossible The Final Reckoning is that it opts not to follow the uninspired routine that was settled for with the previous entry, Dead Reckoning Part I. With myself included, that film was poorly received overall (look for my review on this page). It performed way below box office expectations as well. After its release, writer/director Chrisopher McQuarrie and producer/star Tom Cruise were in a quandary. The hanging thread of a magical key/MacGuffin and the answer to destroying the omnipotent Entity were left unresolved. A new film had to be made, despite an empty storyline. Money had to be spent. So, the guys needed to invest it wisely. For the most part, the finances were used quite well as the pair learned what worked. More importantly they steered away from what didn’t.
What this movie improves upon is a hearkening back to some of the favorite elements of almost all of the prior films in the series, now on its eighth chapter. Naturally, some citations cover what occurred in the last film to drive the continuous thin story of Final Reckoning. There are references made to the mysterious Rabbit’s Foot from the third picture, a favorite of mine. Most notably, is the return of a long-lost character that no one would ever expect to turn up again. The best thing is that he truly serves the mission. He’s not just a cameo blink and miss it. Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire repeated that terrible grievance over and over. The return of this particular guy actually makes you smile, laugh and cheer. Yes, believe me when I tell you that marketing for Final Reckoning thankfully do not share every detail. There’s more here than Tom Cruise running and running some more.
Miguel and I took advantage of an IMAX presentation, and for two guys who normally favor Dolby, this action/adventure should only be seen on IMAX. Probably the best film I’ve ever seen in this medium and I saw Dead Reckoning Part I this way, but that did not measure up to what’s offered this time.
Tom Cruise is absolutely nuts. He’s over sixty and he’s doing some of the most daring stunts he’s ever accomplished. The insurance bill to cover his safety must be at least half the budget to make the movie. The famed biplane scenes that you likely caught in trailers, even on the marquee poster, is so much more impressive on IMAX. You are seeing every limb of the actor’s body stretch to their breaking points to hang on to first a red plane and later a yellow plane. Cruise’s facial muscles stretch against the G-force that is giving him resistance at ten thousand feet in the air. McQuarrie makes sure to cover every inch of these flying machines from the cockpit to the wings and the tail rutters and the landing wheels underneath. Cruise’s superspy, Ethan Hunt, has to climb all over these things as they go up and down and upside down and right side up on top of bursting into flames. This scene is not even over in ten minutes. It feels like a good twenty-five minutes and it looks like it’s no easy feat for Mr. Hunt.
Midway through the film finds Ethan Hunt deep sea diving to a shipwrecked submarine. This sequence might rely more on set design, but I was convinced the entire time that Cruise was actually that deep below the surface of the water. Memories of James Cameron’s The Abyss come to mind, but McQuarrie’s craft of this middle sequence within his three-hour film is so well edited and designed. On IMAX you feel yourself submerged with the weight of the ocean above you. The film will cut to the outside of the sub to show it drifting as Ethan Hunt shifts from one side of the interior to the other. Whatever action the guy takes, the sub works against him leaving you wondering if the vessel is going to topple over an ocean floor cliff to even greater and unescapable depths.
I will never like this movie as much as when I saw it in the IMAX screening. It’s impossible to feel the same way on a large in-home flat screen. This is a giant movie.
Grand set pieces with the sub or the planes had me thinking that Christopher McQuarrie should get a Best Director nomination. I know it won’t happen but not everyone can accomplish what’s offered in Final Reckoning. Could Martin Scorsese or Francis Ford Coppola? I question that, because this is an altogether different kind of beast.
McQuarrie must have done a polish on the violations he committed with the last film. The story remains to be nothing but a chase with countdown digital clocks and the urgency for all of these tasks to be accomplished by Ethan and his team at the exact same second (a repeat M:I staple), but the dialogue does not drive in literal circles of similar vocabulary this time. Terms like “the key” and “the entity” are not so exhaustingly uttered over and over in this film. Esai Morales, as the conniving Gabriel, is much more interesting. In the last movie he was terribly boring. No charm. No anger. No brattiness. Here, he at least gleefully laughs at Ethan’s demise. He’s still far from a great villain and totally forgettable, but at least he’s given something more to do than just stand menacingly behind Tom Cruise. Morales is not just donning a dark tan and a salt and pepper goatee.
Most of Ethan Hunt’s team is given something to do, particularly Ving Rhames as Luther and Simon Pegg as Benji, always reliable. Hayley Atwell was the best feature of the last movie and she’s great here too as the pickpocket, and now supposedly a quick learning kick ass superspy. Kind of—No-VERY ridiculous but I stopped asking questions. Atwell deserves a franchise series of her own. She’s charming and lights up the screen. Great actor too.
Pom Klementieff as the dangerous assassin Paris is now a good guy and other than speaking eloquent French she’s regrettably become a ho hum element. There are other unnecessary characters including Kittridge (Henry Czerny) and those two guys who were chasing Ethan in the last movie. One carries a stupid secret that’s more like an unwelcome surprise. The other joins Ethan’s team to shoot a gun and look panicked.
It will only frustrate you to follow when Ethan or Gabriel has the upper hand. Christopher McQuarrie fleshes out his overly long three-hour picture playing games like that, and I stopped trying to pass his impossible SAT exam. The attractions are a few of the characters who work with Ethan and the great feats of strength that the hero attempts to overcome.
It is not the best in the series. It is a huge improvement over the last picture, though. What’s most significant is that Mission: Impossible The Final Reckoning is a gorgeous, mind blowing and breathless visual opus.
SEE IT ON THE IMAX before it self-destructs on your flat screen in five seconds.
2 UNPAID MOVIE CRITICS!!!! 