Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning Review

With a pre-recorded message from star and producer Tom Cruise thanking the audience for seeing the eighth and purportedly final entry in the long-running "Mission: Impossible" series, subtitled "The Final Reckoning," I sat with eagerness as the lights dimmed and waited for that familiar franchise tune, ready to grip my reclining chair's armrest in excitement.  I thought to myself that this would be the film that concluded Daniel Craig's run as Bond should have been, I mean, the two aren't all that different. Both are similarly the main actor's "last time" in the competing action spy series, both dealing with "the end of the world" while tying all the loose ends into as pretty a little knot as possible. Instead, it was "No Time to Die" all over again, only somehow longer, with fewer action scenes and without the narrative courage.

For nearly three hours, its large and aging cast stand around in exotic locations (ranging from the US to England to South Africa) speaking about how crazy Ethan Hunt's (Cruise) plan is. What's his plan, you ask? What's the plot? Well, there is this evil AI named "the Entity" that is using misinformation to recruit people from all over the world to infiltrate "all levels" of military and government, eventually taking control of nuclear missiles, wiping out the population. 

I guess the idea is that its followers would rebuild the world after, but if the bombs do go off, then all the computers "the Entity" needs to rule its people would be blown to smithereens, unless AI is patient enough to wait for humans to civilize again to the point in which they can build computers. That's some really considerate code right there.

Then there's the issue of how all the people of all different countries would communicate, considering the language barriers, but I digress, I'm sure "the Entity" comes upgraded with auto-translate. (Or how about the issue of physical travel, assuming all the planes, boats and cars would be piles of rubble- you know what, it doesn't matter.)

Anyway, what "the Entity" wants to do is less pressing than the film's villain Gabriel, played by Esai Morales, whose plan is to control it and therefore control the world. (Or something.) But first he needs to infect it with a computer virus created by Ethan's old pal Luther (Ving Rhames), which he acquires early on thanks to plot. But that's not all; he also needs "the Entity's" source code, somewhere on a sunken Russian submarine of unknown coordinates, which is where Hunt comes into things. 

This is a problem right here, as subs rarely make for a good time at the movies, looking more like floating potatoes during outside shots. It doesn't help that 1999's Bond film "The World is Not Enough" also extensively featured scenes of a Russian sub, and is a far slicker and satisfying action spy thriller.

There's more story, of course, ranging from shady government officials to the President of America herself (Angela Bassett) and while none of it is terribly complicated, every plot point is explained in lengthy detail, sometimes with flashbacks but other times with clips of scenes yet to play, surrounded by plenty of Tom Cruise running in a straight line. It all feels like needless padding to its already bloated runtime.

You know you're in trouble when there's only one good scene, its tentpole action sequence featured not only in its trailers but also some of its damn posters; the only surprising thing is how everything else is so boring. Maybe its Tom's age (he's in his sixties, don't cha know?), but this "big summer blockbuster" cheaps out by not showing its star actually fight, and not just once- twice! One time, a nameless guard rips off a mask after the fisticuffs to show its actually him, and the other time, the camera pans away to the sounds of punching, smashing and killing, Tom seen panting with some blood on his shirt next to two dead bodies. 

According to my friend the interwebs, "Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning" was very (very very very) expensive to make, so to leave the viewer feeling cheated is a cinematic sin I cannot forgive and won't forget; making a good movie itself was apparently the real mission: impossible.