Should you choose to accept this movie? Mission: Impossible – Final Reckoning Movie review

You have seen Ethan Hunt run from sandstorms, run over rooftops, run across grasslands. Buckle up to see him run one last time on the big screen. “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning” hits the theatres to give a final farewell to the spy who is almost always considered a traitor by his government.

Taking off from the events of the previous movie “Dead Reckoning Part One”, Hunt & team must destroy the AI known as the “Entity” that plans to end the world. (Curious side note – Why wasn’t this movie named Dead Reckoning Part Two?) Aiding this vision are a number of people including commoners that have infiltrated law enforcement. Gabriel (Esai Morales), who was in the Entity’s good books is now scrambling to get the key back. The Entity now has control of the nuclear weapons of various nations and over the course of the movie, gains access to all of them. Of course, the US is the last to fall and Russia is the second to last. (How else are the movie makers going to keep the Cold War tension going in this nearly 3-hour movie?). The Russian angle is that they are also actively looking for the submarine that has the AI’s source code.

The submarine is under 100s of feet of freezing water, the exact location unknown. Hunt takes the responsibility of retrieving the code and infecting the AI code whilst also (apparently) following the instructions to get the Entity inside the Doomsday Vault in South Africa. This would ensure the Entity’s survival while it launches the nukes all around the world. Can the IMF team retrieve the code and bottle the Entity back in the lamp? Can they do all of this before the missiles darken the sky and lead the humans to a nuclear winter?

Let’s for a moment forget the unbelievable sway the AI has over the public. The plot still fees quite shaky. Why would any program connect to an earlier version of itself and merge the code? A sentient algorithm would have no emotional attachment to a beta version of itself. Also, what is the end game here? The world is destroyed; the AI becomes King/Queen of the Doomsday Vault. Now what? There is no one else in this place, even though it is designed to withstand a nuclear attack, which means it would take hundreds of years for humanity to come back to this location and access the data within. Even then, what would the Entity achieve? It would get back to a world that is similar to the present.

I am no military expert, but wouldn’t a nuclear launch system be air-gapped or at the very least encrypted? AI, for all its advances isn’t any closer to hacking a strong password than the world’s most powerful computers. This is such a gaping plot hole that you aren’t really connected with the sense of urgency seen on the screen.

If the intent of the director was to pay homage to the journey the characters, especially, Ethan Hunt has taken, it is over the top. Old characters and villains are re-introduced though it could have been anyone else playing the same role. The general demeanor of all the characters hovers around “this is the end” and to me, it might be more to do with the franchise’s end and not the end of the world.

Since the Entity is just a bunch of ones and zeros, the movie’s climatic fight cannot be something like flicking off a switch to “kill” the AI. This brings us to the hanging from the wings fight between Ethan and Gabriel. Plus, the plot adds Russians to the list of antagonists. It is revealed that they had the foresight to create a duplicate key. This is good (and explains why they aren’t behind Ethan for the two piece key), but makes you wonder why no one thought to take a backup of the code. Did it have to exist only on the submarine? Some explanation would have made it easier to digest this.

Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt is still as committed and convincing as before. He still runs at the drop of a hat, or hangs from an aeroplane while still playing the suave agent in a tuxedo. The rest of the cast do not get enough screentime even though they have a story arc to find the co-ordinates of the downed submarine. The light banter that Simon Pegg as Benji provides is noticeably absent. Hayley Atwell reprises her role as Grace and Ethan’s love interest. However, I found it strange that she had to be in the decompression chamber as Ethan wakes up from his deep sea dive.

Not an ideal ending to the series, mainly because the movie tries to do many things at once and ends up taking a long time to reach the ending. The whole Russian angle could have been replaced with Gabriel and other villains trying to stop the IMF team and holding the listening station hostage.

3 out of 5 stars, mainly because the action scenes were really interesting and because Tom Cruise still does a fantastic job of captivating our attention when he is on the screen.