The Final Reckoning is one of the most cathartic cinema experiences I’ve ever had in my life. It’s a celebration of the franchise, it ramps up the stakes to apocalyptic levels, it has a gargantuan cast of characters, and it’s nearly three hours long. The massive scale also translates into the film’s tone - The Final Reckoning is equally as self-aware about itself as it is self-important, with many of the franchise’s cliches being ran with (literally) and a lot of big portentous dialogue about the collateral damage that the Entity will cause.
As a possible ending to a franchise, this is over-the-top gloriousness. As a movie, it’s kind of a mess.
The most obvious flaw is the runtime - at 170 minutes, this is way too long. Dead Reckoning managed to not feel like its length but the first act of Final Reckoning is a long series of montages, references to past adventures, and overwrought exposition that really could have been trimmed down into dialogue much simpler and punchier. It’s by no means bad, and I was enjoying the trip down memory lane, but even I’ve got my limits.
And if you thought that talk of the Entity was annoying in the previous instalment, then this will frustrate the hell out of you. It’s pretty cool when we find out the backstory, but there’s only so many times the film can tell you how bad it will be if the Entity manages to assimilate itself into each nation’s nuclear arsenal. Besides, I don’t need to be told that - I think I can work out on my own that a sentient AI being able to fire a WMD is not a good thing.
if there was ever a blockbuster that could get away with this much pomp and excess, it’s the final Mission: Impossible film.
Still, I can’t complain too much. The plot is complete nonsense, but it’s good nonsense, and it gives us excuses to see our team interacting with each other and espousing complete gibberish. There’s some really good bits of comedy here that don’t feel like they’re disrupting the overall story, and the way the film incorporates certain plot elements and characters from previous instalments was genuinely well done. There’s other dangling plot threads that don’t get a look-in whatsoever but hey, you can’t win them all.
And of course, there’s the classic Mission: Impossible action sequences. The film is lighter on action than you might have wanted, but the third act still delivers the constantly-escalating and palm-sweating climax that you want. Tom Cruise runs a lot, he dangles off planes, he flies planes, he jumps out of planes, he crawls around a submarine at the bottom of the ocean. Shut up and take my money.
Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning is a severely flawed mess, and really could have done with more drafts to tighten both the script and the pace. But, if there was ever a blockbuster that could get away with this much pomp and excess, it’s the final Mission: Impossible film. It delivers the goods, overeggs its pudding, ramps everything up from 11 to 111, and puts the bomb in bombastic. Tom Cruise and Christopher McQuarrie have always been focused on exciting their audience in just about every way they can, and while they try way too hard here, that’s still preferable to not trying at all. See it in a cinema, with a big screen and a big tub of popcorn.
If this is the last Mission: Impossible movie, then it went out being as Mission: Impossible as you could ever want. So I just want to say to Tom Cruise, to Christopher McQuarrie, to Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, and every other cast and crew member that has graced this franchise since 1996: thank you. It’s been one hell of a ride and I’ve loved every minute of it (apart from 2, what the hell was that?)