By Lauren Bradshaw
Lauren’s Review

I have been a huge fan of “Mission: Impossible” films for the entire run of the franchise. “Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation”, the fifth installment in the series, is one of my favorite movies of all time. When else can you say that a franchise has multiple sequels that are even better than the original film? 

But that’s where the good news in this review ends; “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning” is not a sequel success story. In fact, I think it is the weakest “Mission: Impossible” film in the entire eight-film collection; yes, I mean worse than “Mission: Impossible 2”. The plot is weak and confusing and there is a complete lack of an emotional arc, which prevents me from really caring what happens to our favorite IMF team. Of course, I am also infuriated that my favorite character, Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson), is actually dead … a remnant of the seventh film, “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning”, that I had hoped would be rectified in this, but sadly it was not.

Picking up after the events of “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning”, The Entity, an artificial intelligence program, is causing even more chaos across the world as it begins gaining access to nuclear weapons from every country that has them; the last holdout is the United States. The threat of global annihilation is at The Entity’s fingertips and the U.S. government is debating whether to conduct a first strike on the AI-controlled nuclear weapon inventories before they can be launched; this would cost millions of lives, but could save the world in the long run. But before an attack is authorized, President Sloane (Angela Basset) gives Ethan (Tom Cruise) and the IMF team a small window of time to try to shut The Entity down once and for all. The team just needs to identify the coordinates of the sunken Russian submarine, the Sevastopol, to gain control of The Entity’s source code, isolate The Entity to prevent it from doing more harm, and not get killed by the other organizations that are also trying to gain control of it in the meantime. Sounds simple, right?

I cannot stress enough how unnecessarily convoluted the plot is in “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning”. In fact, the plot is so confusing, Cruise’s Ethan takes time in the film (through cringey expositional dialogue and flashbacks) to recap the events of “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning” and the mission ahead… to characters that were in the previous film and would already know what is going on. This was clearly being used as an attempted reminder for audience members, but instead, it broke the fourth wall and took me out of the film altogether.

It almost feels like “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning” forgot the main element that made the previous films so successful — the camaraderie of the team. Unlike the other films, much of this one takes place with Ethan on one mission, while the rest of the team is on another. These movies work best when the team is together, working as one unit to ensure the success of the operation; we don’t get that here. Additionally, this film and its predecessor added new team members that are not properly fleshed out and added nothing to the storyline. Why they chose to replace Ilsa Faust, one of the best heroines in cinema history, with the incredibly boring Grace will never make sense to me. This is less a criticism of Hayley Atwell and more a criticism of the script, which left her character severely underwritten. She was also a bit too similar to Cameron Diaz’s character in “Knight and Day”, gasping at most everything Cruise says or does.

The few bright moments in the film are the stunts, especially the one at the end where Cruise conducts incredible maneuvers while hanging onto a biplane. But in comparison to the other “Mission: Impossible”  films, I was left wanting more; the film honestly felt a little light on the action and heavy on the plot. To me, even the craziest stunts in the franchise have felt outrageous, but still achievable. From scaling the facade of the Burj Khalifa to the motorcycle cliff jump on onto a train, there has always been an element of realness to them that made me think the most impossible moments could still be possible. Not in “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning”. Without getting into spoilers, there is a water-based stunt that is so outrageous, people in my audience were laughing… and it wasn’t because there was something funny on-screen.

My disappointment in “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning” is mostly an unfortunate byproduct of the franchise’s success. Because there have been so many stellar movies, my excitement was incredibly high, which makes it sting more that it didn’t live up to expectations. Adding an almost 3-hour runtime makes the pain that much more acute. I hope this isn’t the final installment of the “Mission: Impossible”  franchise, because I would love to see it go out on a high note. But if this is the final film, we can at least take comfort in the fact that it was a great series of films that has continued to push the envelope of what to expect from practical stunts.

My Review: C

LAUREN BRADSHAW grew up in Courtland, graduated from Southampton Academy and double-majored in foreign affairs and history at the University of Virginia. She lives in the Washington, D.C., area and can be reached at flickchickdc@gmail.com.