Mission: Impossible The Final Reckoning (5/10)

by Tony Medley

Runtime 179 minutes.

PG-13

I’m fairly certain that I’ve seen all the Mission Impossible films. I can say without hesitation that not one has been memorable. Oh, the stunts that Tom Cruise always performs himself are memorable. But the plots, scripts, stories, adventures? Forgettable instantaneously. And this one is more forgettable than what came before.

Directed by Chrisopher McQuarrie, as usual, from a script by him and Erik Jendresen based on the TV series created by Bruce Geller, it's basically the same plot, there’s a threat to the world in three days that only Ethan Hunt (Cruise) can resolve. This one is about some Artificial Intelligence caper that will blow up the world in three days unless Ethan can stop it by going through some mind-boggling stunts. There is a stunt near the end of the film with Ethan hanging on to the wings of a couple of biplanes that is pretty amazing (you’ve seen it because it is in all the display ads). In addition to the stunts, the music (Max Aruj and Alfie Godfrey) is terrific, creating tension throughout. It is Oscar®-quality.

But the plot is so convoluted, as are the puzzling characters and the predictable fights (spoiler alert; the good guys survive all of them) so familiar you see them in every thriller made, that the time crawls by. After an hour I was looking at my watch every ten minutes.

There’s one stunt where Ethan has to go underwater in frigid waters. I guess even these filmmakers (Cruise has a producer’s credit) couldn’t figure out how he could possibly survive, so they don’t show it. In one scene it looks like he’s dead underwater. Then in the next scene he’s alive on land with his co-star Grace (Hayley Atwell) kissing him into waking up with no explanation as to how he got there.

Not unlike its predecessors, its raisons d’étre are the stunts and visual effects. Believe it or not, there are 288 credits for visual effects (I counted them)! It was clearly a very expensive movie to make with a budget of, sit down, $400 million, an absurd amount to spend on such a frivolous, forgettable movie.

Since Cruise is now 63, let’s hope this is the last in the series, as it seems to be because there are references to the prior films scattered throughout, if you are an MI afficionado (are there any?). If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all, although each has new, increasingly more dangerous, stunts. I certainly have no interest of sitting through another.

There was a line to get in which is unusual these days. I was standing with an LA Times critic and as we talked, I told him I was cutting back the movies I was seeing because they are so terrible. He responded that he found it worthwhile to see them and warn people about how bad they are, a good point.