Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning

In my opinion, the Mission: Impossible franchise is one of the strongest ongoing action film series, and if you take out a few stragglers from the overall picture, you can stretch it to "ever" without difficulty. So good is Ghost Protocol, Rogue Nation, Fallout, and the recent Dead Reckoning.

The films, again especially under director Christopher McQuarrie, tend to play with act structure, with scene composition, and with classic archetypes to create sequences that almost drip with intensity. The Burj Khalifa encounter in Ghost Protocol that culminates in a car chase in a sandstorm, the epic dive in Rogue Nation that has you holding your breath the whole way through, and the airport scene in Dead Reckoning that was almost a quarter of the entire film - it's inventive, it's intense and, perhaps most of all, it's entertaining, so endlessly entertaining.

The marketing has led us to believe that the latest Mission: Impossible film is a sort of culmination of the story that started so long ago, an ending, and while that obviously places more pressure on Cruise and company's shoulders, perhaps most of the pressure comes from the studio executives behind the scenes, who saw the surprisingly low box office numbers the previous Dead Reckoning produced and are now questioning whether this rather expensive, expansive, and sweeping action series can put butts in seats, as they say.

Yes, the stage is set, and thankfully, The Final Reckoning once again fulfils the central mantra we've come to expect from Mission: Impossible, namely expansive, sweeping scenes, solid acting performances all round, and a sense of flair you simply don't really see elsewhere in the modern Hollywood landscape. It's not all fun and games, and in the frantic attempt to "up the stakes" in the classic action-traditional sense, the film loses some of its playful puzzlement, replaced by a bit too much melodrama.

Tom Cruise is at the centre, it's always been that way, and it doesn't bother me at all. He once again delivers a rock solid, relatable, physically demanding, and emotionally resonant performance as Ethan Hunt, who is infinitely likable throughout. He's also flanked by an excellent crew of old favourites like Simon Pegg as Benji and Ving Rhames as Luther, and Hayley Atwell is also fine as Grace. We've lost a few comrades along the way, perhaps most notably Ilsa Faust played by the always solid Rebecca Ferguson, but beyond that, this is a great character drama delivered by actors who understand the essence of their character and what makes up Mission: Impossible.

However, it's also in the individual exchanges that the film loses some of its subtlety, sometimes lost in oceans of pompous melodrama. It's not that the previous films were outright comedies, not at all, but here it feels like it's been cranked up to 11, and it just grates against the series' otherwise rather insistent focus on combining heavy topics with a quickness that isn't really present here.

And then there's this thing about a malicious AI called "the entity" gradually taking control of the world's nuclear stockpiles - it quickly starts to reek of 90s dialogue sequences about hacking that sound like a grandpa putting together the script by reading about RAM in an encyclopaedia. It's not that the plot structure is unbelievable, but the way they talk about cyber-security, about hacking - it's made so accessible that it borders on the slightly comical, and this Entity isn't exactly scary, as it's constantly talked "about" but not really spoken about. It is referred to as a character, but never manages to come into its own.

That said, The Final Reckoning delivers all the pomp and circumstance you'd expect, including some pretty striking scenes in the second half of the film, again provided by practical effects that will no doubt ensure the film ages gracefully. No, the film isn't as bold as Dead Reckoning, which is basically just three 45-minute scenes that constantly escalate and intensify, but there's plenty to enjoy here and it looks great on the big screen.

It's a shame, all things considered, that Mission: Impossible ends this era with what can only be described as the weakest film of the recent chapters, but that doesn't mean the film is bad, quite the opposite. This is a summer blockbuster for the ages, and while it's not quite as masterful as many of its predecessors, Cruise and McQuarrie prove once again that they know how to put together an action banger.