Over the past couple of decades, no other film franchise has really got close to matching Mission: Impossible when it comes to delivering breathless blockbuster thrills.
The series – which first got going with Brian De Palma's original back in 1996 – has consistently upped the ante with each new instalment, gifting the world several of the finest stunts ever committed to celluloid in the process.
From Ghost Protocol's stunning Burj Khalifa scene – complete with Ethan Hunt's malfunctioning glove – to the astonishing motorbike skydive/train sequence that served as the electrifying climax of the most recent film, Dead Reckoning, Tom Cruise has never failed to wow with his outrageous, death-defying exploits.
It's safe to say, then, that expectations are sky-high for new entry The Final Reckoning. As the title suggests, the film looks like being the closing chapter to the saga began by De Palma all those years ago, while it also follows on directly from the events of Dead Reckoning – with Christopher McQuarrie back in the director's chair for his fourth straight outing.
In The Final Reckoning, we emerge into a world where it has gained even greater prominence: indeed, the situation is now so dire that the Entity has inveigled its way into the nuclear arsenals of every major power in the world, and is threatening instant armageddon.
This immediately gives the film an impressively suffocating doomsday tone that sets it apart from the more playful, almost light-hearted, mood of its immediate predecessors. A gloomy, desperate atmosphere pervades Final Reckoning for much of its runtime, and it really does feel that this mission is the most vital – and, of course, impossible – of all for Ethan and co. A fitting feel for the final film.
It doesn't help that the film seems desperate to tie up various loose ends from earlier entries. There are a number of unnecessary and somewhat clumsy callbacks that don't serve much of a function beyond fan service, and this seems to miss the actual appeal of these films.
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Despite all those drawbacks, there is simply no denying the utterly bonkers brilliance of the film when it gets to doing what Mission: Impossible has always done best. A nail-biting extended underwater sequence at roughly the halfway mark is the first real masterstroke, but – quite incredibly – the franchise has saved arguably the best of all its set pieces for the very end.
And so, while The Final Reckoning is without question more uneven than McQuarrie's three previous Mission movies, its highs are still as high as it's just about possible to get in blockbuster cinema. And so, if this really is Cruise's final outing as Ethan Hunt, it's still a fitting note to go out on.
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