Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning Review

30 years, eight films, heaps of death-defying stunts - the Mission Impossible films are undeniable. Not everyone is convinced this will in fact be the last mission before Tom Cruise passes the MI mantle to another star (Glen Powell?) or ropes in another director (Iñárritu?), but The Final Reckoning is nevertheless a flashback-filled, legacy-cementing ode to one of the most profitable, star-making, one-of-a-kind action franchises of the 21st century, and a bittersweet farewell to the creative marriage between Cruise and writer-director Christopher McQuarrie.

One of the great things about the older Mission Impossible films was the brisk pacing and the lightweight, stunt-focused, plotting. They weren't nostalgic. They didn't need you doing extensive homework like Marvel's multiverse films do. The only "lore" you needed to know about IMF Agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his trusty teammates, Benji (Simong Pegg) and Luther (Ving Rhames), is that they always get the job done and never, ever compromise. There is little emotional or mental baggage carried from film to film. Quite literally, Ethan never seems to carry the scars from the countless beatings and chases he endures. And consequently, each instalment has felt like a fresh, adrenaline-spiking bonanza of Tom Cruise-ness.

But all that changed subtly in Dead Reckoning Part 1, and substantially in The Final Reckoning, with McQuarrie writing the final two films to act as a reckoning of the franchise itself and of its legendary protagonist. Hence, the sprinkling of montages of past films, surprise cameos from old cast members, and the wistful voice-over narrations of Ethan Hunt's heroic work.

Final Reckoning is the most sombre and melancholic of spy thrillers. You could argue that the film's grave tone suits the AI-doomerism cultural climate of the world today. And to an extent, it also suits Tom's age (at 62, he is officially a senior citizen, although, in his underwear-only scenes, he is jaw-droppingly chiselled).

But the crucial reason the film feels so weighty and its screenplay so chatty, is that it takes the stakes very seriously. Ethan is the only man with the skills to stop the all-knowing, all-seeing AI called Entity which has gone rogue, brought the world to its knees, spread misinformation, seeded chaos, given rise to doomsday cults, and - most troublingly - gained access to nuclear missiles.

Ethan and his team don't waste a moment dressing up to crash fancy parties or lining up cool stunts. The film barely even has time for the Ethan-Benji-Luther camaraderie. And Ethan himself seems elevated to a different stratosphere from the rest of the crew who are playing their supporting roles from the safe distance of second location, far away from the main action.

Far, as in, really far.

Of the film's two marquee stunts, one is set up hundreds of feet under frigid arctic waters (submarines) and the other is hundreds of feet up in the sky (aeroplanes). In the eerie underwater sequence, Ethan roots around a downed submarine in search of the Entity's source code. The two defining features of this sequence are the plaintive groans of the metallic submarine as it rotates and tips off into the abyss below, and Ethan's absolute loneliness in this endeavour. Compared to the galvanic underwater sequence in Fallout, this stunt is almost meditative.

If the altered atmospheric quality of the stunts do not scratch your itch, then the film's exposition-filled dialog is even less characteristic of MI. The very agent who skirted authority, defied rules and would rather mingle with arms dealers and disavowed MI6 spies now finds himself talking eye-to-eye with the President of the United States (Angela Bassett) and her bull-headed cabinet (Henry Czerny, Holt McCallany, Charles Panell, Nick Offerman). He is negotiating with the commander of an American warship (Hannah Waddingham) and the captain of an American submarine (Tramell Tillman, who is a breath of fresh air). Forget about all the times Ethan diffused nuclear bombs and thwarted world wars, this time he really, truly is the fulcrum on which the fate of the world rests. He must decide how to capture the Entity while evading the rogue US agents and striking a deal with the Devil taking the form of Gabriel (Esai Morales).

And the film goes to extreme lengths - and very lengthy expositions - to drive home the realness of the stakes and the centrality of its hero. It gets to be too much of talking, when all you really want is to see Tom Cruise do cool shit.

Look no further than at the film's female cast to understand how single-minded and austere the movie is. A slate of actors who are known for turning up their androgyny: a steely-eyed Hannah Waddingham, an assassin-bodied Pom Klementieff, an angular Angela Bassett, and the singular Katy O Brian who plays a submarine crew member and nearly eclipses Cruise's masculinity in shared scenes. Even Hayley Atwell plays it more business-like, less flirty. And her character Grace, a thief-turned-confidante and Ethan's female counterpart, wouldn't be caught dead wearing the thigh-exposing slit that Rebecca Ferguson's Ilsa Faust dons in a previous film. It is all strong jaws and death stares, as if even a whiff of femininity might distract from pressing matters.

Impossible as it may be to imagine anyone else playing Ethan Hunt, the film prepares us to say goodbye with a thousand nudges, and perhaps rightly so. Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt, IMF agent extraordinare for 30 years, has an undeniable look of weariness - as if all that past trauma of the job suddenly and fully calcified in his heart. The IMF team-space is a frigid maze of chambers in an underground tunnel, and team briefings are solemn affairs where no Benji shows off a flashy new IMF gadget and no Luther rolls his eyes. Now, the shadows are always playing across Ethan's face even when he preaches optimism and self-determination. The iconic Mission Impossible sound-byte that signals the start of a caper is heard only as the credits roll. And that's how you really know that this is the end of a chapter.

So sadly, even though Ethan Hunt is the only man on the planet that you trust with the fate of the world, you give him permission to call it a day, get a good night's sleep, maybe find a lover, and retire to the beach.