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.

Mission Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1

Ai Ai Oh

Mission Impossible -
Dead Reckoning Part 1
Directed by Christopher McQuarrie
USA  2023 Paramount Pictures
UK cinema release print

This was okay.

Having said that, I’m really not sure why Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning Part 1 has had such strong word of mouth... the reviews I’ve been half hearing lifted my expectations to a point where I was possibly going to be a little disappointed with whatever I saw at the cinema last night, perhaps. Okay, so my history with the Mission Impossible film franchise (which you can read in its entirety via reviews accessed from the index link top right... just scroll on down past the book section and into the film section) is such that I thought the first one was so so and that, after that, each successive film kept getting better and better, up to and including the fifth in the sequence, Rogue Nation, which I personally think is the best of these movies to date. The sixth one was okay but I think was nowhere really near it in terms of the art and craft of the former and, I think, that holds for this one too, which seems to be not quite as good as the previous movie in the series also.

Still, it’s quite good and holds the interest all the way through. It’s a nice piece of espionage entertainment and the cast and crew still do a great job with it. This one continues with most of the regulars in place... so we have the core team now pretty much being Tom Cruise, Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames and Rebecca Ferguson. There are a few others returning too, in the form of Vanessa Kirby as the arms dealer The White Widow and, for the first time since the first movie, Henry Czerny as Kittridge. 

 We also have a ‘new to the franchise’, joint leading lady in the form of the great Hayley Atwell as professional thief Grace. I loved Atwell as Agent Peggy Carter in the various Marvel movies and TV show and she’s a good fit with Cruise for this film for sure.

Another stand out new character in this one is a female assassin called Paris (named after one of the original TV show characters) played by Pom Klementieff (who plays Mantis in the Marvel movies). She’s got a lot of screen presence in this and is a lethal proposition in any fight... she also has her own kind of shorthand mini arc in this and... well, not saying anything more about her other than she’s a good character.

The plot of the film in terms of the global threat the team has to face in this one does feel like the stakes are upped once again. It’s a newly self aware artificial intelligence (so we’re told) known as The Entity, with a human assistant from out of Ethan Hunt’s (Tom Cruise) past in the form of human villain Gabriel (Esai Morales). The Entity is a big problem because it sets everyone (every nation and power) against each other when it needs to and can be in the room listening to you all the time, because it’s in everything digital. Which is why, halfway through the film in a sequence where one of my favourite characters gets killed (nope, I’m not saying which one... there are more than a few deaths in this movie), the crew find out that their tech can’t be trusted to be working with them and, at one point, their espionage toys are taken away from them completely. So yeah, they’re alone and in the cold with everyone after them because, of all the interested parties who have a stake in finding the AI, which involves gaining possession of two halves of a key which will unlock something which nobody seems to quite know about yet... Ethan Hunt and his friends are the only ones who want to destroy it and not try and control it for world domination. So, yeah, it’s the rest of the intelligence bureaus in the world against them, not to mention the AI, which seems to be manipulating them at every turn.

The film has some good practical stunts (always a bonus and I wish Tom Cruise would just slow down a bit before he kills himself... he’s a good actor and doesn’t deserve to die for a movie) and some lengthy action set pieces. I did find a lot of those pieces kinda dull to be honest but, not so dull that it wasn’t entertaining enough in its combined onslaught that I ever got bored, to be sure. Lorne Balfe’s score, again incorporating Lalo Schifrin’s iconic themes, is pretty nicely done but, again, I don’t think it’s the best in the series. Of all the composers who have worked on these films over the years... Danny Elfman, Hans Zimmer, Michael Giacchino, Lorne Balfe... I think it’s Joe Kraemer’s score for Rogue Nation which is the most satisfying of the bunch. This one is pretty cool though and I’m looking forward to purchasing La La Land’s CD release of this and giving it a spin when funds allow.

Other than that, not much more to say about Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part 1... it’s a nice enough movie for lovers of the series and, as you’d expect, it kinda leaves things up in the air with all the threats still out there. Although it does have a stop and take a breath resolution of sorts at the end, to wrap things up and get things ready for part two next year. I guess it’s a cinematic rendezvous I’ll definitely have to keep with the caveat that Cruise has said that the conclusion will be his final part in the franchise. So expect more regular character deaths and mayhem would be my guess.

Mission Impossible - Fallout

A Running Cruise

Mission Impossible - Fallout
2018 USA Directed by Christopher McQuarrie
UK cinema release print.

So here we go again. The sixth entry into the big budget, big screen versions of the popular Mission Impossible TV show is with us and, once again, the trailer managed to drag me in using the cunning ruse of a running Cruise doing lots of action stuff against a coolish sounding score. Which always works on me, to be honest.

For a few years now, I have observed that each one of these films released always seems to be even better than the previous movie in the series and this culminated in my favourite of these fizzy, spy action confections from the Mission Impossible team, Rogue Nation. I have to say that, while Mission Impossible Fallout carries on the same story, set a couple of years later, this one doesn’t actually get nearly as good as that previous installment. Although it’s still a pretty cool movie and certainly as good as the third and maybe fourth movies. Nothing to rival that wonderfully spy-hard cool opera house sequence in Rogue Nation though, alas.

The plot set up is that, with the captured Solomon Lane (played once again by Sean Harris) in the hands of various governments, the remnants of his terrorist group The Syndicate, calling themselves The Disciples, are being held together by a mystery man known only as John Lark. Tom Cruise returns as Ethan Hunt whose mission, should he choose to accept it, is to get back a load of stolen plutonium from The Disciples and, presumably, find out who John Lark is and shut The Disciples down before they blow various countries up etc and destabilise the world as we know it.

So, yeah, business as usual and Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames and Alec Baldwin from previous films in the franchise are there to help him do it. Unfortunately, Jeremy Renner doesn’t return here as he was busy shooting the sequel to next year’s follow up to Avengers - Infinity War (reviewed here) but instead we have a new character played by the current Man Of Steel himself, Henry Cavill. Of course, Cavill is no stranger to the spy game as he played an interesting variant of Napoleon Solo in the recent The Man From U.N.C.L.E movie (reviewed here) and, sure enough, he does a pretty good job here as the ‘blunt hammer’ of a character he is initially introduced as. Also back in the mix, we have the very welcome return of Rebecca Ferguson as the double agent Ilsa Faust from the last movie and an interesting turn from actress Vanessa Kirby playing a character called White Widow. There’s also another, very special returning character... but I’ll get to her in a minute.

So the film is full of the usual action sequences and I was absolutely horrified as to how much of the stunts Cruise gets to do here. Sure, we all know the story of how he injured his ankle jumping between two buildings and, yes, you can totally see that shot in the final cut and feel the pain of the star as he does things to his ankle that  he’s not supposed to. What really worried me, though, is that he’s also flying helicopters quite dangerously by himself, riding motorbikes against traffic and even performing a free fall rescue operation and halo jump (for which he trained for about a year) and, wow, I’m so amazed this guy is a) able to get insured on set/location in any country other than Hong Kong and b) hasn’t accidentally killed himself making one of these things yet. This guy is certainly dedicated to his craft, though, so despite heavy qualms about his personal beliefs off of the set, you have to give this guy a lot of respect for these kinds of shenanigans. Not to mention he’s also a pretty great actor with a very likeable on-screen presence (and I know from a first hand story on a bus ride from one of his old costumers that he’s a pretty nice guy to be around on set with too).

The film is a blast if you like stunts and action sequences as they are all done with the usual slick, professionalism that this kind of high profile Hollywood blockbuster usually achieves but my biggest problem is that... okay, it’s good but there are absolutely no real surprises in it. There’s a so called twist in this and there are also a fair few scenes set up to fool the opposition and, for effect, the audience at the same time but, honestly, if you’ve seen just a few of these films then you’ll see all this stuff coming a mile off... not to mention the ‘not so well hidden’ true identity of John Lark. That one’s kinda obvious. So the lack of ‘I never saw that coming’ really does bring the film down a level, I think.

That being said, it’s still a blast and it also sees the return of Michelle Monaghan in a quite respectfully highlighted role in the last big section of the film, reprising her character from the third and fourth films and finally tying up that ‘big loose thread’ from the third one which people like me have been so worried about since that installment. Things seem definitely finished up with that character and Ethan Hunt in this one but they don’t do this in the obvious way and it’s not what you’re thinking... perhaps the only half surprise in the movie is the restraint by the writer/director not to do the obvious thing with her character... which is kinda nice.

And of course we have the all important score by a composer I quite like this time around, Lorne Balfe. Now, as much as I would have preferred the director retained the services of composer Joe Kraemer, as his score for Rogue Nation was possibly the best of the big screen franchise scores, Lorne Balfe does an excellent job here, as I knew he would. I really have to listen to the CD when it comes out (with extra music not on the stupid electronic release I’m told... Woohoo!) to get a more accurate impression from the score as it gets covered up by various explosive actiony noises here but from what I can hear of it, it’s not too shabby. He didn’t, from what I could make out, use Lalo Schifrin’s classic title melody as much as some of his predecessors (although The Syndicate theme also seems to be back here too) but when he does use elements of it he makes them count and I am looking forward to hearing this one away from the movie (I thought his score for the reboot of The Sweeney was superb).

And that’s about all I have to say about this one. If you are a fan of these films then you will already know what to expect and you’ll probably have a good time with this one. If you are more casual in your Mission Impossible viewing habits, however, then I would say you would be doing yourself an injustice if you didn’t watch Rogue Nation before watching Mission Impossible Fallout, to be fair, so you can get a sense of the recent history of the series. Definitely one to watch, though, when you’ve seen the others... should you choose to accept that mission.

Mission Impossible at NUTS4R2
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to click on one of the titles below to take you to my review.

Mission Impossible
Mission Impossible 2
Mission Impossible 3
Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol 
Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation 
Mission Impossible: Fallout

Jack Reacher

Reacher Feature

Jack Reacher
USA 2012
Directed by Christopher McQuarrie
Playing at cinemas now.

Well this was a lot better than I was expecting.

I’m not the biggest Tom Cruise fan although, to be fair, I did think he was pretty great in Minority Report. I’m not indifferent to him for any particular reason (although I think scientology is probably a bad thing to be involved with and that may tint things a little for me) but because he just doesn’t usually make the kind of films that are a blip on my radar. Consequently, I haven’t seen that much of his work although, I will add to that to say that, whenever I have seen him on film, he usually comes across as a more than credible, perhaps even great, actor. So I have no doubt he’s eminently watchable in whatever movie I would choose to see him in.

Jack Reacher is, again, a movie which probably would have not made it onto my radar except, I always take my folks to the cinema on my birthday and, frankly, there was nothing else of even the remotest interest being shown at my local on the day of said occasion, which we hadn’t already seen. Having said that, I’m very glad I took a chance on this movie... and here’s why.

Jack Reacher is not the high octane, modern action thriller you would expect from all the hype and advertising. It’s a little better than that, for the most part, although there are some action scenes for the sake of action scenes which do seem plugged in to just hit a peak with the audience at various points... but even those are tastefully done to the point where the action never really becomes dull or boring.

What you have here, instead, is a more old school approach to a film that slots into the term “action thriller” with a much more “what it says on the tin” attitude than you would normally hope for. It takes it’s time to build up character and plot points, for a start. One character, who is just a lead into an action scene and then becomes a link to the next puzzle piece has far more screen time than you would expect her to, for example, and turns up a few more times than is necessary compared to the way most modern films would short cut past those scenes and just have her as a quick, verbal link to move things on.

Another thing I will say about this film, and you may think I’m a looney making this comparison, is that Jack Reacher felt to me, at times, very Hitchockian in its execution. There is some interesting stuff happening and there are some camera angles, for instance, like a birds eye view of a character walking into an establishing shot cut in amongst the rest of the footage, which is exactly what Hitch would have done. In some ways, this movie feels like somebody asked Hitchcock to make a slick, fast paced, 2012 high testosterone action movie... and Hitch failed and instead delivered something way more interesting.

The picture opens with a, perhaps clichéd at first, sniper sequence.... you know the old chestnut where a killer sets up his kit, moves in position and you start tracking what the killer is tracking through this gun site. Well this is a pretty good set up in this one, as it happens, because you start seeing potential targets over a leisurely amount of time, and you start trying to put their stories together in your head as the site pauses on them, moves on, moves back to them etc, before finishing with them and moving on to the next person. It’s a little bit like Rear Window where James Stewart is staring out of the window with his binoculars at the apartment building opposite and you try to figure out which characters are going to be important to the story. Once you figure out who you think the target is, though, the rug is pulled from you and, without spoiling the sequence for you, the rug is pulled in an unexpected manner and, although the reason for what happens is blatantly apparent to the audience right from the offset, an hour or more before the main protagonists seem to know what’s going on, it’s a little unexpected and becomes quite poignant in a little “flashback” scene illustrating something the title character is explaining later on in the film and he begins to put all the stories of the people in the opening sequence together for you.

Tom Cruise plays Reacher as a confident superman of a person... A modern day Doc Savage in a world he has chosen to drop out of but has to “ride into town and clean the place up”... yeah, you got it, Jack Reacher is very much a western dressed in action-thriller clothing but then again, half the films made these days share similar tropes to the movie western so this is not a criticism of the film. Cruise’s Reacher is under control most of the time and the only thing I will be slightly critical of, and Alan Ladd had the same problem back in the day, is that for someone who has so much physical presence (and the way Cruise plays him, he does), Cruise seems a little too short for the role. It’s the first time I’ve noticed that in his films, it’s never made a difference before... but something made me notice that in this one. That being said, though, Cruise makes the character work for him and you can’t fault the actor for making a very good job of a likeable, confident character (although, I’ve not read the book this was based on so I can’t tell if the character as portrayed here is true to the book, I’m afraid. Sorry).

At the end of the day, Jack Reacher is a really well put together film and it’s one that I think a lot of audiences, even the youngsters, will appreciate. It’s not something I could watch over and over through the years but I did really enjoy it and would welcome a sequel if it does the business at the box office. Very much something I would recommend if you like a bit of proper sleuthing tied-in to your action movie.