Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning
With “the fate of every living thing” in his hands, Ethan Hunt is ordained the Chosen One in an overlong and over-complicated sequel.
Esai Morales and Tom Cruise
Image courtesy of Paramount Pictures.
The last film was a hard act to follow. The long-awaited sequel, running at a rather self-important 170 minutes, continues with the same premise, in which an AI superpower – ‘the Entity’ – is planning to take over the planet. The only way to stop it from unleashing an arsenal of warheads from eight of the world’s nuclear powers is to unplug the Internet, which is harder than you might think. So the US president, Erika Sloane (Angela Bassett, who also played the commander-in-chief in the Netflix series Zero Day), is faced with Sophie’s choice – if the world wide web is disabled, how many lives will be lost? However, the severely wanted IMF agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) has a plan. It’s a ridiculous one, and has a “one in a trillion” chance of working, but it’s a plan. But first Ethan Hunt has to turn himself in – or be abducted by his government.
As The Entity dishes out misinformation across the globe, spreading dissent and a volatile world order, the president tells Ethan: “You’ve never let us down. You are the best of men in the worst of times. I need you to be that man.” There are complications, of course, not least the most devious of supervillains, Gabriel (Esai Morales, from 1983’s Bad Boys), who is seeking to harness the Entity’s powers for his own ends. He just needs a gizmo called the Podkova, trapped in a missing Russian sub somewhere at the bottom of the Bering Sea. By threatening the life of Ethan’s nearest and dearest, Gabriel forces the rogue agent to risk his own life to retrieve the gizmo from the freezing waters of the water basin. And so it goes…
While the world’s most famous stuntman pulls off some pulse-accelerating physical acts that will be talked about for years to come (check out the poster), the rest of The Final Reckoning trudges along at a somewhat laborious pace. Whereas the first chapter spilled adrenalin like there was no tomorrow, the sequel lacks momentum, humour and, believe it or not, credibility. It all gets so far-fetched that the impossible begins to feel ludicrous and irrational, and the plot twists and constant parade of double-agents borders on the exasperating.
The lack of human interaction detracts from any sense of real drama, while the Internet as an uncontrollable menace is beginning to become a little old hat. Nevertheless, due to the film’s inordinate length, there is time to include the occasional scene in which some of the characters do resonate on a human level. One such is when Hayley Atwell’s IMF agent Grace attempts to comprehend the hand signals of an Inuit woman (Lucy Tulugarjuk) in order to ride a sled. And who can resist the sight of Tom Cruise performing his signature Tom Cruise sprint, this time across the length of Westminster Bridge? Indeed, there are good things aplenty, but what the film really needed amongst all the high-tech wizardry was something as unassuming as a pair of scissors.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Tom Cruise, Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Henry Czerny, Angela Bassett, Esai Morales, Pom Klementieff, Holt McCallany, Janet McTeer, Nick Offerman, Hannah Waddingham, Tramell Tillman, Shea Whigham, Greg Tarzan Davis, Charles Parnell, Mark Gatiss, Rolf Saxon, Lucy Tulugarjuk, Cary Elwes, Katy O’Brian.
Dir Christopher McQuarrie, Pro Tom Cruise and Christopher McQuarrie, Screenplay Christopher McQuarrie and Erik Jendresen, Ph Fraser Taggart, Pro Des Gary Freeman, Ed Eddie Hamilton, Music Max Aruj and Alfie Godfrey, Costumes Jill Taylor, Sound Enos Desjardins, Luke Gentry and Jed Loughran, Dialect coach Jacob Hajjar.
Paramount Pictures/Skydance/TC Productions-Paramount Pictures.
170 mins. USA. 2025. UK Rel: 21 May 2025. US Rel: 23 May 2025. Cert. 12A.
