The decrepit dysfunctionality of MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - THE FINAL RECKONING
The eighth and seemingly final entry into one of the most iconic action franchises falls short right at the finish line.
For better or for worse, the Mission: Impossible franchise is something that has never felt stylistically intact. From the highs of De Palma’s classic, to the lows of Abrams’ shoddy Tony Scott impersonation, it is a collection of films heralded by one of action’s most iconic but yet all of them feel their own. Even with Christopher McQuarrie taking over the reins for the back half of the franchise, his eye shifts from film to film. However, there is something weirdly defective nestled into its penultimate outing, Dead Reckoning, that never fully weakens the foundations of the film. The Final Reckoning, however, is a disappointing misfire, bringing to light all of the nestled defects of the previous outing and caving into all of the franchise’s worst and occasionally best tendencies.
McQuarrie's directional efforts peaked with his franchise opener of Rogue Nation, one of the best of the lot. It’s set pieces and striking compositions, a breath of fresh air coming off the back of 3 and 4, but yet as he’s tried to keep this franchise running, his efforts behind the camera have fallen to superfluous Dutch angles and egregiously excessive talking heads, put together by an editor who's trigger-happy for that cut button. Standing at a tall 170 minutes, notably a franchise record, The Final Reckoning spends its entire first act, roughly 75 minutes in length, dedicated to delivering endless expository dialogue. Dead Reckoning had moments of this, but never to this extent. Don’t worry if you didn’t rewatch any of the franchise beforehand, it makes damn well sure you know every nitpick that happens in most of the previous films! When you think it couldn’t get any worse, it does. I’m talking continuous flashbacks to futile moments, forcing the viewer to be dragged along by an inert hand that has zero interest in moving its narrative forward. Its entire opening act could be cut from the film, and we’d just about end up with the same film.
Every character acts like some videogame NPC quest giver. Drink every time someone mentions the world is going to end. It’s the delivery of exposition that feels so asinine that you're left wondering if it’s becoming a parody of itself. Every scene where it's just people delivering dramatic but ultimately flaccid dialogue is shot with those intentions. Focus shifts, timely cuts, the lot. It’s the kind of stupid that just annoys me, rather than something of germane intent. All but sauceless.
As well as its muddled elucidation, McQuarrie becomes entwined in a doomed obsession with introducing new faces and seeking closure for everyone involved. He begs the audience to find emotional kinship within every one of its characters. The result amounts to an odd array of contrived backstories, desperately trying to pull strings from thin air, trying to connect them back to non-existent joints in an ultimately monotonous fashion. You can’t help but feel sorry for the characters that this franchise has raised for so long, only for them to be shunned by a man who can’t come to terms with the concept of a tight narrative and ambiguity. A film that ultimately lacks a competent sense of rhythm that De Palma, Woo, and even McQ himself once held.
Despite my heavy-handed criticisms, after a tortuous opening hour or so, we actually start to shift gears. What follows is a middle act of prime Mission: Impossible set piece splendour. This ever-evolving action scale reaches new heights as it awakens into competence and finally recognises that they’ve got to make a movie. Gorgeously lit underwater sequences, paired with a zero dialogue approach and the full width of the digital IMAX scope. This is exactly what we had all come to see. Tom is at his most physically challenged (and vulnerable) with Tramell Tillman and Katy O’Brian stealing every image they can. Without this segment, this film would’ve fallen into total incompetence.
Whilst the film never really falls into the lost levels of its opening half again, you can’t help but feel the irreversible damage of such events and the subsequent, poorly motivated villainous side. It’s war on AI, through the eyes of The Entity, never forms more than the words ‘the world is going to end’. Its so-to-be worldwide presence and our inability to hide from it only gets as far as its reliance on the cynical nature of its human characters, which is brought up at every possible encounter. Never atmospherically present, and even with its feebly written human pawn of Gabriel, its last act just feels all too familiar, and thus never reaches a point of total unpredictable tension that you’d expect from a supposed series finale.
It hurts to go out on such a whimper of mediocrity that has glimpses of genuine brilliance. We saw the signs in Dead Reckoning, maybe we should’ve known?