Mission Impossible- The Final Reckoning review

 

Warning- this film contains wild peril! Yes, it’s Tom Cruise back for the eighth- and apparently final- impossible mission. Prepare for incredulity to be generated as Tom engages in a series of ludicrously risky quests to avoid the world ending. It is three hours of tense seat edge scenarios which of course any ordinary person would not be able to complete. Such ingredients combine to create a relentless rollercoaster which only stops for breath so it can tell us what the jiggins is going on.

 

 

They did change the title from being part 2 of Dead Reckoning but essentially that is what it is. Don’t worry if you’ve not seen part one or forgotten it, the first five minutes provides a handy flashback to all seven previous films. I say `Tom Cruise` because Ethan Hunt must be the least defined character to ever carry a franchise. Nobody really has any idea who he is, what makes him tick or even whether he prefers latte or cappuccino. Details are unimportant when you are world saving but this vacuum does mean he comes across like a superhero whose power is endurance beyond belief.

At some point these films lost their espionage premise and became almost indistinguishable from James Bond movies with globetrotting locations and threats to the whole world and this film takes it to another level. It’s as if you can hear Cruise and director Christopher McQuarrie saying `remember what we did last time- well this time we want it even bigger, even better`. As it happens it’s not, there is nothing here to rival the train sequence from the last one which must be one of the most thrilling action pieces in any film. Yet Dead Reckoning (part one) also had lightness of touch too when  it needed to, more interesting locations and a sense of its own frivolousness while keeping the pace.

This time there’ a pulse quickening sortie inside an old submarine buried on a precipice deep beneath the sea which reaches such extremes of difficulty that it becomes a bit silly. By the end the sub is toppling off an undersea cliff loosening missiles that could quash Tom who opts to remove his diving apparatus so he can escape through a torpedo tube. Reality is on hold. Later on, a similarly parlous pursuit involving old biplanes adds further layers of excitement as it happens simultaneously alongside a potentially exploding bomb, a near fatal injury and some wire that need cutting. Another highlight is a fight sequence inside a burning building. I’ll remember those but what about the threads that link them together.

The narrative continues the previous film’s idea of a super intelligent AI system that is taking control of everything, notably the world’s nuclear weapons. Nobody says why it might want to do that and the message here is that AI IS BAD in capitals. There are a couple of McGuffins which if joined together can halt it – really?- and the extraordinary lengths that Tom and co have to go through to achieve this provide the action. Maybe he’s felling guilty as he leaves one of them somewhere for the villains to nick. Yes, Tom does all his own stunts but sometimes less is more and here it feels like he’s showing off. The plane sequence for example goes on too long and it feels as if they are trying to show us just how many different positions Tom can hang onto a plane in.

This is definitely an exciting, action stuffed film but anyone looking for any character nuance at all will be disappointed. Ethan Hunt remains a blank space and from his associates only Haley Attwell and Simon Pegg add some lighter touches and  identifiable human-ness to matters. The antagonists’ plans seem over egged and I’m not sure they even make sense but, never mind, all it needs is for Tom to leap or dangle or swim impenetrable depths to sort it. Meanwhile in the background we have the US President and her sundry advisors fretting over the end of the world in a scenario that tries to be tense by adding more sweat each time we cut back but never has any of them thinking `well maybe we could call the other world leaders about this to prevent the misunderstanding`?

In the end- spoiler alert- Tom does not die and looks ok for someone who has been nearly killed at least three times in the movie. There’s even a hint that this may not be his last mission after all. However its symbolic of how emotionally cold these films are that the surviving characters all meet in London afterwards but don’t say a word to each other, just nod. Still , after a script that has delivered more than its share of portentous warnings, perhaps that’s for the best.

Don’t get me wrong, this film is absurdly enjoyable as a cinematic experience, but that is all it is. In fact at times, I wondered if that compilation of previous films in the series had been running for three hours because there is nothing new here, nothing believable or real or thought provoking but as a fictional over the top popcorn adventure it works a treat.