This image shows (from left) Pom Klementieff Greg Tarzan Davis, Tom Cruise, Simon Pegg, and Hayley Atwell in a still from the film “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning.â€
This image shows Tom Cruise in the film "Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning."
Paramount Pictures, via the AP
A sense of finality permeates every aspect of the last chapter of the “Mission: Impossible†series, appropriately subtitled “The Final Reckoning.†In this latest installment, the entire world is at stake, building on 2023's “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One.†The film is also the final adventure of the last honest-to-goodness movie star, Tom Cruise.
Ethan Hunt (Cruise) has always been an enigma in the franchise. Hunt lacks the charisma, sophistication and panache of James Bond. The drinking and womanizing didn’t suit him. Beginning with 2011's “Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol,†Cruise cracked the code and decided to simply play himself. Hunt is earnest, disarming and will do anything to get the job done, because that’s who (at least publicly) Tom Cruise really is.
This image shows (from left) Pom Klementieff Greg Tarzan Davis, Tom Cruise, Simon Pegg, and Hayley Atwell in a still from the film “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning.â€
Paramount Pictures | via AP
Actor and character coalesce when watching Cruise on-screen, only equaled by performers such as Jackie Chan or Buster Keaton — artists who lived outside the confines of being an “actor†and became cinematic legends — a brand unto themselves.
Despite an unwieldy first act, director Christopher McQuarrie — helming his fourth-in-a-row “Mission: Impossible†film — wrangles 30 years of loose threads together into a coherent culmination of the series. McQuarrie and Cruise are so dedicated to the task, it won me over.
If Keaton — the legendary silent film comedian and stuntman — could witness Cruise’s admiration and respect for the art of the stunt, he would be knocked out of his socks. Two showstopping sequences — one underwater and one in the air — are almost entirely silent, because Cruise can’t talk when 150 mph winds are hitting his face or if he is gasping for air underwater. That sense of reality engages our senses, leaving us no choice but to stay on the edge of our seat.
The finale — which sees Cruise traverse two biplanes in midair — is perhaps the greatest action sequence I’ve ever seen in a film. The stunt itself, however, is not what makes it work. It’s McQuarrie and Cruise being smart enough to show us the minute details of each sequence — including how they could go horribly wrong — that aids in the suspense and thrills.
Plot premise of AI antagonist too viable for comfort
The crux of the plot of “The Final Reckoning†is more prescient than ever. The sense of paranoia is dialed up as Hunt navigates the artificial-intelligence being known as the Entity. There are echoes of the Cuban missile crisis, as the nuclear arsenal of nations fall under the umbrella of the Entity, and fears of a super AI being destroying humanity have rarely felt as viable as they do in this film, and in this moment in time.
The Entity represents artificial intelligence defeating human imagination. McQuarrie and Cruise fight that hostile takeover with their creativity and showmanship. In an age when technology overwhelms every facet of our lives, the team behind “The Final Reckoning†asks audiences to trust them with the technology they wield, just as those in power trust Ethan Hunt to always do the right thing and get the job done.
Artificial intelligence is also a danger to the sanctity of the art of filmmaking. It can mimic the human imagination, but it can’t replicate it … yet. McQuarrie and Cruise utilize the mechanism of film to advocate for the persistence of the human condition in valuing life — that our fate is ours to control and wield, should we choose to accept it.
