Trust in the Mission: Impossible series that, when it does cave fully into self-indulgence, it does so with the fatalistic pomp of Wagner’s Ring cycle. It’s hard to say, in an industry where money decides, whether The Final Reckoning will be the last time we see Tom Cruise’s IMF operative Ethan Hunt. But if this is our final farewell, we’ve at least gone out with demonstrable proof that he is, as Alec Baldwin’s character once described in 2015’s Rogue Nation, “the living manifestation of destiny”.
The Final Reckoning is inherently absurd. It also reaches such highs that it’s hard to really be that bothered. It’s the sort of lumbering titan that feels perfectly fitting, as reportedly the fourth most expensive film ever made. We kick off with the implication that Hunt, in his continuing efforts to defeat the all-powerful AI known as The Entity (the film was originally conceived as part two to 2023’s Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One), is primed and ready to lead what Frank Herbert would call, in his novel Dune, the Butlerian Jihad, the eradication of all thinking machines.
Then, a factory line of familiar faces from the recent and distant past turn up to assure Hunt that he is, in fact, the centre of the universe, the only person who could prevent a third world war, then usher in world peace with a handshake and a few words about how nice it is when everyone works as a team. He is unequivocally, to return to Dune terms, his reality’s Kwisatz Haderach, with none of the novel’s scepticism towards saviours and messiahs.
If that all sounds like one massive ego trip for Cruise – well, yes. The Final Reckoning is primarily billed as “A Tom Cruise Production” over its official director, Christopher McQuarrie. But Mission: Impossible has built its entire home on the foundations of self-worship, and as one of Hollywood’s last holdouts when it comes to real, tangible spectacle. It has a commitment so pure that Cruise recently said of his work, “it’s not what I do, it’s who I am”. And it’s not entirely unearned. The Final Reckoning, when it comes to stunt work, truly has no peers.
Cruise-as-Hunt scrambles onto a biplane mid-air, piloting it with one leg sticking out of the cockpit, before lining it up and leaping onto a second biplane to chase The Entity’s right-hand man, Gabriel (Esai Morales). Cruise-as-Hunt explores and then escapes, in the most claustrophobic way possible, a wrecked submarine that has started rolling across the ocean floor like a pencil.
And for all of Cruise-as-Hunt’s godlike powers, the actor is especially willing here to slip and slide around the place like he’s been touched by the grace of Buster Keaton. Up in the stratosphere, his cheeks start flapping like the national flag; he’s often stripped down to his briefs, which would suggest a desire to show off his highly toned physique, but often renders him surprisingly vulnerable, hunched up in the foetal position at one point in what feels almost like an homage to the Star Child in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
The Mission: Impossible series has, over time, grown increasingly sentimental as Hunt has consolidated his IMF family, chiefly his tech team Luther (Ving Rhames) and Benji (Simon Pegg), and Schrödinger’s love interest Grace (Hayley Atwell), whose ambiguous romantic tension with Hunt seems to be a “have your cake and eat it” approach to pairing an action star with a much younger woman.
However, for all its Hunt-centric egotism, The Final Reckoning also expands that idea of family to shine a spotlight on an entire line-up of potential Cruise successors, from Pom Klementieff, as once-evil-now-good assassin Paris, with her full-throated approach to stunt work, to Katy O’Brian and Severance’s Tramell Tillman as two submarine crew members. She’s got the muscles and the lethal charisma; he’s got a smile so warm the film pauses for a second so we can bask in it. The Final Reckoning, final or not, presents us with a fascinating contradiction: Ethan Hunt is both a pure singular and a state of mind. He’s cinema as the madman dreamer’s paradise.
Dir: Christopher McQuarrie. Starring: Tom Cruise, Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Henry Czerny, Angela Bassett. Cert 12A, 170 minutes.
‘Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning’ is in cinemas from 21 May
