Can you really get TOO much of a good thing? If so, ‘Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning’ seems to be the cinematic offering to the old adage.
Let me be clear, this is a fantastic movie. It jams everything that’s been so great about the Mission: Impossible series…the nail chewing tension, the clever MacGuffins, the humor and of course, those ridiculous stunts…and stirs it all together with a blend of flashbacks and surprises that makes this more than the usual action fest, but likely a more emotional ride than you were expecting.
But with a running time of a titch under three hours, perhaps a bit more time in the editing room should’ve been part of the mission. The feeling after experiencing it is similar to the aftermath of a hearty Thanksgiving dinner; you’re very satisfied, but you’re awfully stuffed.
Picking up where ‘Dead Reckoning’ left off two summers back, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is looking to destroy The Entity, an evil and powerful artificial intelligence that sprang forth from a Soviet submarine and proceeded to take over the world’s most classified information with the ultimate plan to outright destroy the big blue and green marble we call home. Along with his team of super spies… Haley Atwell, Ving Rhames and Simon Pegg…Hunt has had to wrestle a baddie who simply goes by Gabriel (Esai Morales) for possession of a key that can unlock the rogue AI’s source code. And in ‘The Final Reckoning’ their tussle and the race to stop the Entity involves more fireworks than ever before.
Director Christopher McQuarrie, who also co-wrote the film, is sharp – he understands, though the weaving plot threads and clever callbacks help hold the audience’s attention, the reason that people are in the seats for any ‘Mission: Impossible’ movie is to watch Tom Cruise sprint, climb, jump and dangle off stuff in the most outlandish and death defying ways imaginable. And with the bar being set SO high over seven previous installments, ‘The Final Reckoning’ serves up some doozie sequences for Cruise, one that involves dodging nuclear missles rolling around the hull of a submarine at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, and another that has the star hanging off the wing of a biplane. Just another day at the office for Ethan Hunt.
