‘Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning’ Review: Tom Cruise Saves The Universe
Well, this is it, the “Final Reckoning,” or so the title says. I have to wonder for a minute: is it really? I guess it will depend on the box office numbers internationally, and going by those? Yeah, probably. It’s just as well, too, because after 30 years and eight installments, this series has run out of ideas. The latest entry not only recycles stuff from previous movies – including a few unnecessary callbacks – but from other popular franchises.
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The premise borrows from Marvel and Avengers: Infinity War, the Terminator movies, and any sci-fi thriller you can think of. Mission: Impossible has gone as deep as it can into dystopian science fiction as it can this time around without losing its grounded feel. I’m not trying to sound cynical when I say that. This is not the worst entry or even the worst movie this year. It has entertainment value, but I still found things to pick at.
Picking up from Dead Reckoning (not that you’d notice), Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) learns he doesn’t just have to stop Gabriel (Esai Morales) from gaining control of the AI known as the Entity. He has to find a way to stop the Entity itself from eradicating humanity with every nuke on Earth. So, Ethan has to get the team back together and maybe ready them all, especially himself, to make the ultimate sacrifice.
This element turns the Scientologist Cruise into a quasi Christ figure. If short of that, he at least becomes a chief apostle or prophet for mankind on the way to martyrdom, and it’s hard not to see this. Moreover, while echoes of his beliefs can be found in all his movies, he seems to have turned up the dial to close out Mission: Impossible.
The best case in point that comes to mind is a scene where Cruise gets into a sensory deprivation chamber (basically a techno coffin) to speak in a mind-meld fashion with the Entity (voiced by Morales). Like an alien abduction, the AI does a knowledge dump into Ethan’s mind to show off its plan, and like a mad god, it forces him to accept its will. “Don’t resist. Resistance is futile. You’re only hurting yourself.” All that jazz; you know, same old story.
I was reminded about the accounts from ex-Scientologists including Leah Remini about the sessions, called audits, the “church” would force members to undergo to prove their level of commitment. They hook a subject up to a device with wires and electrodes called an E-meter and ask a bunch of questions. It’s little more than an interrogation meant to intimidate and get more money from people, but it’s a notorious and suspicious practice that continues to this day.
It seemed to me like Cruise was drawing from his belief system, but also the usual Malthusian plot points to push a narrative. The crux of Final Reckoning’s story is man needs to be culled in an extinction event not seen since the dinosaurs. The Entity wants this to bring about a new enlightened age where only certain people and creatures who fit the right criteria will be allowed to live. The trouble is the program is looking to a future where most of the privileged few haven’t been born yet.
That’s a convoluted motivation when you get down to it, but I’m just getting started. There are more holes, complications, and stumbling blocks this movie has to deal with. To begin with, why does a futuristic AI with god-tier intelligence have to wipe out the entire planet in a nuclear Holocaust? That sounds pretty drastic to me. Why can’t it – oh, I don’t know – educate the masses and show them the error of their ways in more of those auditing pod thingies? It had no problem bending Tom Cruise to its will. What’s another several billion people, many of whom wouldn’t put up a fight?
Second, why’s the plan always nuclear Armageddon or something similar? Couldn’t the Entity learn how to hack every mainframe on Earth and cut off the power to every electric grid, and as a result, medical care and the food supply? Vaporizing everyone in the blink of an eye, that’s pure gold, but slowly starving your undesirables is a bridge too far? What difference does that make to a super computer? (Especially when part of its plan is to go offline and hibernate for 1000 years.)
It only gets more complicated. The Entity needs all of the world’s nuclear arms to pull off its sinister agenda. When one or two countries have enough nukes to destroy the world several times over (or so it’s said), I have to ask myself why. And I did that a lot through watching. I frequently said to myself “That was convenient” and “but why?” That went into overdrive when multiple things were happening and going awry in the final act.
You have two groups in a cavern after a skirmish; one is defusing a bomb with a megaton payload and a complex fuse for the second time. The other has a wounded Simon Pegg coaching Hayley Atwell on rewiring a server that will capture the Entity. Cruise, in a retread of Fallout, is up in the air chasing Gabriel. Except, this time, instead of helicopters, they’re in fancy biplanes.
Turning to Gabriel for a second, I liked Esai Morales’s portrayal and thought he was a solid, more interesting villain than all the tech psychobabble, which is typically more satisfying as a background MacGuffin. When the time for his defeat comes, he is dispatched in such a slapstick way, it takes all the air out of him as a menace. They built him up as a crafty foe always ten steps ahead, and his ultimate end was like “Thanks for coming, bye now!“ It’s a waste.
Despite that, the film overall is not a total loss. It keeps a serious tone, but is something you can have fun with even if it overstays its welcome. It’s also more seared in my memory than The Accountant 2, The Amateur, or A Working Man, so I can put it ahead of those films, however casually.
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Mission: Impossible -- The Final Reckoning
PROS
- Serious tone
- Good performances
- The big callback to the first movie is fun
CONS
- Overcomplicated plot
- Scientology and Malthusian dog whistles
- DEI in the story is obvious, though it doesn't drag the film down
- Wasted main villain, I.e., the Gabriel character
- Plot armor saves everybody
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