Mission Impossible - The Final Reckoning

AIs Wide Shut

Mission Impossible
The Final Reckoning
Directed by Christopher McQuarrie
USA 2025
Paramount
UK Cinema Release Print

Warning: Spoilers for the last movie.

Okay... so right up front I will say that, since I thought the last film in this mostly wonderful franchise was a bit dull and, since there’s been a lot of word of mouth and critical response that the first hour or so of this one is pretty dreary before it picks up, I was going into Mission Impossible - The Final Reckoning (which should rightly be called Mission Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 2 but I suspect there’s a very good reason it isn’t, perhaps to do more with the box office returns on the last one rather than any superstitious caveats the main lead has with the number two) with not so high hopes. So right up front I would like to refute all those claims because, frankly, I had at least as much fun with the pre-submarine sequences in this as I did with the rest of the movie. Perhaps more than the rest of it to an extent.

This one sees the return of most of the crew from the previous three films... Tom Cruise, Simon Pegg, and Ving Rhames (alas, my favourite character played by Rebecca Ferguson was killed off in the last installment) along with recent new regulars Hayley Atwell and the increasingly brilliant Pom Klementieff. Plus assorted newcomers.

Cruise’s Ethan Hunt character is in hiding, now possessing both parts of the cruciform key needed to lift the next gadget to help bring down the Artificial Intelligence (AI) known as The Entity, which is gradually taking control of the nuclear arsenals of the world for a big bang day to wipe out humanity. It’s obviously down to Cruise and some new, acquired on the job team members (including an absolutely brilliant call back character who was a very minor character in one sequence of the first film and played by the same actor... who’s has a lot more to do here and is just fantastic) to help him in his quest.

It’s fast and furious and everybody is really good, with some intense scenes between the president (played by the great Angela Bassett) and her staff, who want to start the nuclear war just a little early. Can Cruise and co come through in time? Well, the highly improbable set of split timing sequences which make this a possibility, leading to a thing which has to be timed blindly to within literally a blink of an eye, requires... people performing the usual superhuman style antics which takes a lot of suspension of disbelief, for sure.

Now the two big action set pieces of the last two hours of the movie were, to me, a little dull... a submarine suspense sequence and a bi-plane suspense sequence (I prefer the more punch punch, shooty shooty explosion style set pieces myself) but all in all I’d say this film has a much more even tone than the last one and it is, I’m glad to say, a fair bit better than that one (even with the exclusion of Rebecca Ferguson). The score by franchise newcomers Max Aruj and Alfie Godfrey is serviceable but seems to be lighter on the Lalo Schifrin themes than some of them... that being said, since it’s so far not had a proper CD release at time of writing  (just a rubbish digital and scratchy vinyl release) it may be that I don’t ever get to hear it away from the movie, which would be a shame.

All in all, I didn’t find this film at all slow and I’m scratching my head at some of the comments by the critics. A criticism would be that Shea Whigham’s character did not, this time around, need an almost ‘so tacked on it seems fake’ callback to one of the characters in the first movie... that was kind of dumb and unnecessary, I thought. However, having said that, I’d like to throw out a big shout out to Rolf Saxon and Lucy Tulugarjuk, who were both brilliant here. Not to mention Love Lies Bleeding star Katy O’Brian, who doesn’t have much to do here but who certainly has a lot of screen presence.

And that’s me done with Mission Impossible - The Final Reckoning other than to say... final reckoning my backside. Cruise and his cast and crew could easily make another one of these if they change their minds and the big bad of the movie could also easily be brought back if that is what the writers intend. Not the best of the Mission Impossible films (that would be this one, here) but nowhere near the worst of them and with some nice shout backs which tie it back to a number of the previous films too. Works well at the cinema and would probably suit a big TV set too, I suspect.

Gunpowder Milkshake

Dinergeddon

Gunpowder Milkshake
France/Germany/USA 2021
Directed by Navot Papushado

Warning: Some light spoilers here.

Wow, what a great action movie. I’ve been a huge admirer of Karen Gillan ever since she charmed our hearts and minds as Amy Pond in Doctor Who. She’s finally making some success of it in Hollywoodland now, with roles like Nebula in multiple Marvel Cinematic Universe films and, okay, the odd thing like the Jumanji reboot (a film for which I’ve still not had the heart to publish my review and, I will one day but, to sum up my thoughts on that one... bloody awful... but she was still good in it, even if she couldn’t save the picture). Since I saw her in the opening of Stuber (reviewed here) and she played the all action cop partner who was fridged right at the start of the film to motivate the main character, I’d been wondering when the fine folks in Hollywood were finally going to let her head up an action vehicle and, yeah, Gunpowder Milkshake is an almost perfect film with which to do it.

The plot is very simplistic, which means there are no ‘I saw that coming an hour ago’ reveals and it really is just a string of big action set pieces strung together with the bare bones of a story. Here, she plays a very successful hit woman working for ‘The Firm’. Her mother, played by the equally wonderful Lena Heady, kinda ran out on her when she was young and she was subsequently brought up by one of the higher ups in The Firm to be... well... just like her mother. The film opens with a mostly absent action sequence which is continually referred back to throughout the film in which, due to bad instructions, she kills the son of the head of a criminal organisation. She then compounds the mistake by not recovering some stolen money but also by rescuing a young girl, aged 8 and three quarters and played by Chloe Coleman, whose father she also mistakenly killed.

And then, both the heads of rival criminal organisations want her out of the way and so she goes to borrow weaponry from three former associates (I’m simplifying for the sake of brevity here) at a library which specialises in firepower... played by another three big action names, Michelle Yeoh, Angela Bassett and Carla Gugino. Along the way, while protecting the newly orphaned child, she also reunites with her mother and, long story short, the six women fight back against the huge groups of assassins coming for them.

And it’s just a wonderful movie. Giving us a diner where people have to check their guns in, a library where people can check guns out and, eventually, leading us back to the diner... where many people get checked out. The chemistry between the actors and the wonderful dialogue they perform is top notch (even Michael Smiley gets a look in and, as for the representative for 'The Firm', it’s Paul Giamatti, ‘nuff said!) but even that pales in comparison to the absolutely wonderful mise en scène of the thing. It’s like a colourful, poppy comic book tapping into a vague noir thriller sensibility and then mixed liberally with a fair few spaghetti western tropes into the bargain. I knew I was in good hands when Gillan returns home at the start of the movie, opens the fridge and there’s a wonderful shot looking at her from inside the fridge which then tracks down from one shelve to the one below it in a smooth camera movement. Another great shot, which acts by way of an establishing shot, is when we are caught up with the aftermath scene of her character’s unfilmed mistake and the room full of carnage is viewed through the vertical rectangle of an open doorway surrounded by blackness at the centre of the wide screen ratio, the rectangle widening out slowly as the camera zooms in.

There’s some beautiful use of colour too, with a very bright palette of combined primaries which occasionally gives way to a frame which is purely infused with just one colour, such as red washing over the shot. This film goes for a full on eye candy approach which, when coupled with the rich sound design and beautifully choreographed action sequences, makes for a very seductive viewing experience.

There are some nice things I hadn’t seen here before too, including a scene where the kid has to help Gillan’s character because both her hands have been numbed but she has to get into a big fight and, similarly, because of the same reason, she has to help the child drive her car in a cat and mouse car chase in an interior car park. It’s good, inventive stuff and well worth a look, even for the most jaded action fans... and it doesn’t hurt that it has a warm heart beating at the story’s centre either.

And as for Frank Ilfman’s incredible score... well. It starts off really well with a theme made of five note melodic segments played on, what sounds to me, like a cimbalom (or something near to that). It’s used quite a lot in the early part of the movie but then, starting with a scene which itself has big ‘showdown eye’ moments reminiscent of a Sergio Leone spaghetti western, there's what sounds like either a sample or rerecording of the ‘we can fight’ chorus from Morricone’s score for that director’s A Fistful Of Dollars... as we are presented with a beautiful action cue that acts as an ‘homage with a beat’ to various Morricone scores, including a chime which has the same orchestral punctuation of the pocket watch chimes in For A Few Dollars More and some spots which glue the music together in the style of Edda Dell'Orso’s kick ass vocals for films like The Good, The Bad and The Ugly and Once Upon A Time In The West. It’s a wonderful cue which scores a fight in Gutterballs Bowling Alley (a reference to The Big Lebowski, perhaps) and, although two of the major action scenes use needle dropped songs to back them up, there is a lot of the Morricone influenced stuff in it and while the song which scores the slow motion fight at the diner is fine, it’s heavily preluded by a typical Morricone-esque showdown opener which Ilfman manages to pull off with a certain amount of style. I’ve heard other composers try to do this on occasion and, sometimes fail to keep the spirit without overly copying from the late, great Italian maestro.

And if that wasn’t enough, in a shootout scene about halfway through the movie, the four bad guys are wearing latex masks of the ‘big four’ Universal monsters... Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy and The Wolfman... culminating in a scene where Gillan violently despatches the 'Dracula dude' in the exact manner befitting his original counterpart (perhaps more in line with the way Hammer would do it, in terms of graphic violence). It’s not a subtle movie for sure but... it is very welcome.

And that’s all I’ve got to say right now about Gunpowder Milkshake. If you are a fan of action movies which have beautiful cinematography, great actors, a nice bit of scripting and some wonderful music, then you really can’t go wrong with this one. I just hope this one makes it onto Blu Ray at some point because I’m chomping at the bit to grab this one as soon as it comes out. A highly recommended, explosive beverage of a movie, for sure. 

Black Panther

Wakanda Man Is He?

Black Panther
2018 USA Directed by Ryan Coogler
UK cinema release print.

Black Panther is the latest in the chain-linked Marvel Cinematic Universe movies which have set modern cinematic trends on fire since the debut of the first Iron Man film. It carries on directly from story and character elements set up in both Avengers - Age Of Ultron (reviewed here) and Captain America - Civil War (reviewed here).

Now, I’m not a big Black Panther comic book fan, truth be told. I remember I used to draw him occasionally as a kid (like most of the Marvel and DC superheroes) but I never really had any of his stand alone appearances... just the odd appearance in a hardback UK british Marvel annual or Marvel Treasury edition guesting in other heroes' stories. So, in terms of the comic book roots for this film, I can’t really talk with any authority.

I do, however, remember Klaw (aka Ulysses Klau) and was really stoked when he turned up in Age Of Ultron, portrayed by Andy Serkis, because I wanted to see him in the colourful costume and with the ‘sonic claw’ he used to wear on his arm. Alas, my biggest disappointment with this movie is that, although Serkis once again shows up to do the honours, I felt he was a really under utilised character and, alas, doesn’t have either the costume or that big metal stump  with the sonic antenna sticking out of it... which is a shame. I had further disappointment with this character’s arc here too... used as a bit of a plot point rather than a character in his own right... but I can’t say too much here because I want this review to be spoiler free.

As it happens though, in spite of this, Black Panther is actually pretty good and certainly holds its own with a fair amount of the MCU movies over the years. And in terms of art direction... well in that respect it’s probably the best of the current Marvel movies... at least in a visual sense.

The film has good performances all around and that helps a lot for a movie with not many ties to the other films being present in the flesh, so to speak. Chadwick Boseman really seems to have grown into the role fairly quickly and he has some of the humour which the character was missing in Captain America - Civil War. Which is not surprising since his involvement in that movie came from his reaction to the death of his father. Martin Freeman returns here too, as the CIA agent he played in Civil War and he is also a heck of a lot more palatable this time around with him taking a more heroic role... though having an American accent coming out of his mouth is still just plain wrong and sounds quite terrible. Lupita Lupita Nyong'o, Letitia Wright, Angela Bassett, Daniel Kaluuya and Forest Whitaker are all, as expected, strong in their varies supporting roles and, I have to say, Michael B. Jordan as the villanous Killmonger is quite striking, both in presence and appearance here.

Okay. So there’s a lot of good stuff here with an almost ‘international espionage’ tone to some of the scenes (my favourite part of the movie was the ‘incident’ set in a casino in Busan) and the action is as competently handled as well as it is in all the other Marvel movies of recent years. That being said, in a movie which is pretty entertaining a lot of the time, I did have a few little grumbles with it.

Okay, so my main problem was that it was quite repetitive all the way through. You have three (technically) combat challenge scenes, three spirit journey scenes and the whole thing kept feeling like... "Didn’t I see this stuff enough earlier in the movie?" I take the point that most Marvel movies like this are somewhat formulaic in that they are ‘battle - pause - battle - pause - battle - pause’ movies but I just felt the types of situations which presented these conflicts could have been a little more varied in the execution. This is maybe, partially, due to the fact that the film doesn’t ‘globe hop’ as much as some of the others (most of it is set in the fictional country of Wakanda) and... I dunno... it just got a bit ‘samey’ after a while.

The only other problem I have with it is in the continuity of the Black Panther character in relation to his other appearance. We saw in Captain America - Civil War how he failed to stop the murder of his father and then took over the mantle of Black Panther. However, it turns out he doesn’t get his ‘panther powers’ bestowed on him - by the ingestion of a specific herb - until this part of the story, set after those events from the former film. So are we saying the version of the character in that one was not operating at optimum strength? Especially when, to be honest, I couldn’t see much (if any) difference between that version of the character and this one? I either didn’t understand something or there was some sloppy writing in here. Not sure which, to be honest.

These are all fairly minor grumbles though and there’s a lot of good stuff to make up for it.

I said the film has the best art direction of any of the MCU films to date and the colours utilised throughout are fantastic. I loved the clashes of the red costumes of the king’s personal guard against the various sets/locations and there are some amazing, probably artifically enhanced, skies in this film. It’s really nice to look at and marks this director out as someone to watch, I think.

It also has a really nice score by Ludwig Göransson but I’m really unhappy that, just like another MCU film Guardians Of The Galaxy 2 (reviewed here), the powers that be have not seen fit to issue a CD release of this one... instead going down the incredibly stupid ‘download’ route. Way to exclude the soundtrack listeners who wanted to purchase this thing people! This practice should be outlawed.

So there you have it. A pretty cool film. I don’t think it deserves all the unbelievable hype it seems to be getting and, frankly, it’s no Wonder Woman (reviewed here) but it is a pretty good entry in the series and it certainly doesn’t let the other movies down... although I didn’t like it as much as some of the others from the last couple of years of the ongoing saga, truth be told. It does have a certain power though and brings, again, a slightly different feel to the Marvel Cinematic Universe which will be useful in future crossovers... the next one being the big Avengers - Infinity War film in two months time. With regards to that, this film has two post credits scenes... one in the middle and one right at the end so, you know, you might want to stick around for those two. A certain character makes an appearance in the second of these who I was expecting to turn up in the main body of the movie properly and lend a hand, given the set up in a previous film but... oh well, at least he’s in here.

If you are a lover of the Marvel superhero movies then Black Panther is a little different and definitely one to have a look at... especially if you want to know what’s going on for the next one. Definitely give this one a go if this is your thing. A solid entry in the ongoing Marvel juggernaut.