As Marvel has been learning, it’s hard to keep a franchise fresh and relevant. Mission: Impossible, though, may be the first to be too relevant. The idea of all-powerful artificial intelligence attempting to nuke the planet back to the Stone Age was a bit of escapist fun in the days of Terminator 2. Now? It feels like something Sam Altman might casually raise in an OpenAI brainstorming session.
If the stakes in Final Reckoning – the eight M:I movie and a full stop of sorts for the series – are triggering (and in fairness, the pilot episode of the ’60s TV series did involve a couple of rogue nuclear warheads, so World War III has been on its mind before), the execution is regularly breathtaking.
Writer-director Christopher McQuarrie’s storytelling ambition is off the scales here – a bug as well as a feature. Not content with springboarding off the events in Dead Reckoning, The Final Reckoning stitches in call backs to the original Brian De Palma movie and even JJ Abrams’ unloved Mission: Impossible III.
This makes for an opening 30 minutes that are treacly when they need to be spry and nimble. It’s exposition served five ways, with flashbacks and flashes forward (Mission: Impossible’s ‘here’s what you’re about to see…’ opening credits makes it all start to feel like Tenet), and an entire scene where Cruise is plugged into a kind of hypobaric exposition chamber.
So, a quick reminder: The Entity, a malevolent AI, now controls the entire internet from a sunken Russian submarine. A few months without TikTok videos of baby pandas has reduced humanity to a febrile, culty mob. Enter the daredevil Hunt and his small band of agents – Simon Pegg, Hayley Atwell and Ving Rhames are joined by Pom Klementieff and Top Gun: Maverick’s Greg Tarzan Davis this time – to unplug The Entity before it can take control of the world’s nuclear arsenal and turn humanity to toast. Only Hunt has the key – literally and figuratively – to stop it.
With action sequences this adrenalised, no one is leaving short-changed
As well as Terminator 2, there are shades of WarGames, Crimson Tide, and even 1960s polar potboiler Ice Station Zebra and Sidney Lumet’s Fail Safe, as McQuarrie bolts Cold War anxieties onto a highly plausible tech future.
It’s a surprisingly doomy note to inject into an action-packed spy caper, and a strange tonal shift from the filmmaker. But The Final Reckoning really finds its fun in a second half that delivers an array of escapist locations and two of franchise’s most adrenalised and expertly designed action sequences. One is underwater, one airborne – neither is in any way plausible.
So, sure, the plot is overstuffed, the cross-cutting is frenzied, and Pegg’s goofy asides are the only light relief from the underlying somberness. If you’re looking for flaws, The Final Reckoning definitely has them. But with action sequences this adrenalised, no one is leaving short-changed.
Because no one has ever worked harder to entertain you than its star, a man who continues to take gravity as a personal affront. Cruise may be the last of the great action stars – enjoy his bonkers feats while you can.
In cinemas worldwide Fri May 23