Everything came full circle in Christopher McQuarrie’s Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning.
Dubbed as the final movie in the hugely successful action franchise, The Final Reckoning takes off from the events in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One where Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his crew are out to save the world from a man, Gabriel (Esai Morales), who holds the key to global domination via a destructive sentient A.I. program called the Entity.
The stakes are way higher this time because the world as we know it is about to end. The Entity has infested cyberspace and corrupted digital information. It is now taking over the world’s nuclear missiles one by one. Running out of time, the president of the United States urges Hunt to come out of hiding to, once again, be “the best of men in the worst of times.”
You’ll notice that the opening scene is unlike those in the previous movies by not showing an explosive stunt. This somehow foreshadows the tone of the movie: exposition-heavy. It took a while before we see the opening credits, which had a nice touch of nostalgia in it.
We see the same set of characters: Luther (Ving Rhames), Benji (Simon Pegg), with some nice developments more notably in Paris (Pom Klementieff) and Grace (Hayley Atwell). And a touching tribute for a well-loved character.
As expected, the movie delivered the action we expect. If there’s anything we’ve learned from the past three decades, it’s that Tom Cruise will stop at nothing to give the audience what it wants—and deserves: edge-of-your-seat hand-to-hand combat, shootouts, and all that impossibly lengthy running.
Cruise’s dedication to creating an exhilarating movie experience through death-defying stunts couldn’t be more evident in Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning. After seeing him climb a mountain (with no protective gear) in Mission: Impossible 2 and scale the world’s tallest building with only a single safety rope in Ghost Protocol or ride a motorbike over a cliff in Dead Reckoning, you’d wonder what else he hasn’t conquered yet.
So, he ventures out to unchartered territory: the depths of the ocean. The scene where he searches for the Sevastopol and retrieves the Podkova (where the Entity’s source code is stored). The entire thing will keep you on the edge of your seat: he swims out of a submarine and narrowly escape deadly propellers, dives down to the dark depths of the sea, finds his way in and out of the wreck that’s slowly tumbling down to the trenches of the Bering Sea, and his jaw-dropping escape toward the surface—which, I have to admit, bordered on being ridiculous. But hey, I’m here for that kind of action.
What I appreciate most about The Final Reckoning is how co-writers Erik Jendresen and director McQuarrie managed to tie everything together by using elements from the previous films to make sense of the current events. The storyline was solid. I think there was a conscious effort to make the whole premise relatable even to those who haven’t seen all the Mission: Impossible films, which is admirable. The references to plot points and characters in previous films were woven nicely in the script.
While it does get a bit too expository, Eddie Hamilton’s editing made sure dialogue-heavy scenes keep the audience glued by inserting clips from the previous movies. It was a considerate gesture because after three decades, it’d be impossible to remember all details about the earlier movies.
In some ways, it also gives Hunt the closure and peace he needs. All those years of covert missions that forced him to make a few questionable choices—sacrificing a few to save billions of lives. It’s made clear that his choices in the past led to the imminent danger posed by the Entity. Realizing that he was partly responsible must have filled him with guilt, which would explain the lengths his character would go just to save the world one last time.
It’s a fitting way to end the franchise.
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is now showing in Philippine cinemas.
Watch the trailer here:
