Sorry for the delay on this one, it was a really busy week for me and I didn’t have the time to go and see this one. But as soon as things calmed down, I headed on over to the cinema to check out Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, one of our most anticipated films of the year (obviously). This is heavily implied to be the final Mission, so how does Tom Cruise and Christopher McQuarrie fare on this possible swan song for the franchise? Let’s find out.

The film was originally to be titled Dead Reckoning Part II, but both this film and the previous one were retitled to make them more standalone, despite this very much being a direct sequel to the last one. I’d say you’d 100% need to be up to date on the events of Dead Reckoning, as its villain and plot do carry forward. But you should maybe brush up on the first film and the third one as well, as the film does some slight retcons and callbacks to make those films tie into this one, giving the illusion that everything in the franchise has been leading to this moment.

It’s a bit clunky if I’m being honest, and the opening half hour of this movie suffers for it, as it’s a massive exposition dump. Not only that, but we’d get brief shots of previous films during said information briefings, which made that opening extended sequence feel very choppy and unfocused. We’d have flashbacks within briefings with shots of older movies, and I had a sense of “Oh no,” worrying about the rest of the film. But it does lock in and become more focused after a major event happens within the first half hour or so.

While not per se a criticism either, this entry doesn’t feel as exotic as the other films. The Mission series is a globe-trotting adventure, and we get taken to far-off cities and locations that serve as eye candy during all this end-of-the-world business. Final Reckoning feels far more confined in this regard, with most of the film taking place in bunkers, safehouses, facilities, and even a few submarines. So it felt very confined and boxed in relative to the other films. I’m not sure if this was a budgetary restriction or a narrative one, but it was something I noticed as the film started feeling boxed-in as it went on, and for a film that is 170 minutes, that becomes more obvious as it goes. Thankfully, the final action sequence does take place outdoors (more on that in a bit), so it does end on a more exciting note in more than just the stuntwork.

I’ll be brief on the plot of the film, but Final Reckoning sees Ethan Hunt once again going up against the rogue AI known as the Entity, which is gearing up for some pretty apocalyptic plans of its own. Naturally, the IMF can’t have that, so they have to race around the globe looking for anything that can stop the AI. Returning to help Ethan are Grace (Hayley Atwell), Benji (Simon Pegg), Luther (Ving Rhames), Paris (Pom Klementieff), and Theo Degas (Greg Tarzan Davis). The latter two and Grace were introduced in the previous film. Esai Morales returns as well as Garbeil, the villain from the previous film and much like that one, I was kind of indifferent to his villainous character. To be fair, the Mission franchise overall hasn’t produced many iconic villains, the best being Philip Seymour Hoffman in the third entry and Henry Cavill in the sixth. Gabriel is just very bland and unforgettable, as is his relationship to the Entity. The Entity, as a concept, is quite eerie and chilling in this day and age, but the concept of it being able to speak and interact with the characters in the movie does come off as an attempt to humanize a digital villain.

Unlike the last film, which I wrote was surprisingly humourous, Final Reckoning is a very bleak film with little time for laughs and levity. I think that’s fair, as the stakes and the plot don’t feel like they should have too much time for light quips in the middle of a mission, as this is likely their most daring and critical mission to date. I very much enjoyed that the stakes felt big and consequential in this one, as if the floor was falling apart from under them and time was very much not on their side.

The film’s script may have been inconsistent, but the action sequences were anything but. There are two major action set pieces in the film, so if you don’t want to know what either of them are, proceed to the next paragraph. But you probably already know of one, as it was heavily featured in the film’s marketing, and that’s the plane sequence. It reminded me a bit of the helicopter sequence from Fallout, but it was still a nail-biting sequence featuring Cruise hanging from the side of a biplane, wind blowing in his face and everything. It was harrowing and probably the most insane stunt the franchise has ever shot, and that’s saying something. Another excellent sequence came when Ethan was looking for the Entity’s source code in the sunken submarine seen in the previous film. This silent scene was incredibly tense and featured a rotating set with various degrees of flooding, and as the submarine was rolling, said water would roll through the set, causing both the perspective and the location of the water relative to the room to change. Great stuff. It reminded me a bit of the floating hallway fight scene from Inception, and that’s always a compliment.

Final Reckoning may not be quite the slam dunk the franchise was thinking of, but it’s still a really good time at the movies, especially if you’re a fan of this franchise. The action was insane, and the overall plot and stakes felt very real and impending. The script was a bit messy, and it was a little too long, but I still came out entertained and satisfied despite its shortcomings.