Cruise keeps us hanging on for the Mission: Impossible franchise climax

First, there’s the word “final” in the title, which feels like a fairly unequivocal indication that Ethan Hunt’s train-surfing and skyscraper-scaling days are coming to an end. Then there’s the film’s extended opening sequence: essentially, a greatest hits stunt montage culled from the previous pictures that plays out over a message from Potus herself, president Erika Sloane (Angela Bassett), pleading with Ethan to come out of hiding and save the world from an impending nuclear Armageddon one more time. Finally – and we are deep into spoiler territory here, so I will tread carefully – there’s a deft throwback to the very beginning of the franchise with a returning character who pops up in the very last place we might expect to encounter them.

Anyone with even a passing familiarity with the Mission: Impossible series will know what to expect from this latest. It has always been the gold standard for inventive, breathlessly tense, dizzyingly complex extended action set pieces. On that level, Final Reckoning doesn’t disappoint (more on which later). Less successful: pretty much anything that isn’t action.

Let’s start with the libido-shrivelling anti-frisson between Tom Cruise and his female co-stars over the years. These films are so neutered and sexless, they’re the movie equivalent of an Action Man doll’s shiny, smooth plastic groin area. In past pictures, Cruise has had next to no chemistry with a range of potential love interests, including Thandiwe Newton as Nyah in the second film; Michelle Monaghan, who plays his wife in the third film; and Rebecca Ferguson as MI6 agent Ilsa Faust in Rogue Nation.

The current lucky lady is expert pickpocket Grace (Hayley Atwell), who was introduced in previous film Dead Reckoning Part One. While not explicitly positioned as Ethan’s girlfriend, she does get to snuggle with him in a portable decompression chamber (let’s put aside the science questions for a moment and just focus on the positives: it’s a moment of intimacy, even if one party is unconscious for most of it).

Another enduring problem with the franchise is the writing. This instalment hinges on a malevolent, all-powerful AI known as “the Entity”, which is chewing its way through the firewalls of the world’s nuclear powers and, for reasons only a malevolent AI would understand, planning on using the global nuclear arsenal to wipe out humanity. The Entity has amassed an army of human cheerleaders in the form of a doomsday cult of tech-bro zealots, and is on the wish list of every deranged, power-crazed maniac on the planet, including Ethan’s dapper, maniacally grinning foe Gabriel (Esai Morales). To defeat or control the Entity requires the retrieval of some kind of digital widget from a sunken Russian nuclear submarine somewhere at the bottom of the Bering Sea.

There’s an awful lot of plot to cram in, and the writers (McQuarrie is joined by Erik Jendresen) lean heavily on exposition tag teaming, a clumsy technique by which each member of the cast gets to contribute a line of dialogue that explains what the plan is, how dangerous it could be and how infinitesimally small are the chances of success. Add to this a score that’s as self-important and shouty as a Truth Social post and you have a thunderously crude piece of film-making.

Having said that, the action sequences are phenomenal. A chase involving two biplanes and a great deal of midair dangling is an absolute blast; an extended underwater sequence in the crashed submarine, its nuclear torpedoes rolling around like bowling pins, is unbearably stressful. Cruise’s Ethan ups the ante on the tension by deciding to shed his diving suit while still hundreds of metres underwater – a reckless act that risks fast-freezing his extremities like freshly picked baby vegetables, turning his lungs inside out and his brain to mush. Mission: physiologically impossible, more like. And it’s exactly the kind of preposterous showboating silliness that has made the Mission: Impossible films such fun over the years.

But is it really the end? It certainly looks that way, as this nearly three-hour picture drags out its big emotional climax. Though as Ethan Hunt has taught us over the years, nothing is impossible.

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning (170 mins, 12A) is directed by Christopher McQuarrie and stars Tom Cruise, Hayley Atwell, Simon Pegg, and Angela Bassett.