I by no means thought I’d see the day when Tom Cruise didn’t stick the touchdown, however right here we’re. Mission: Inconceivable — The Ultimate Reckoning, the second half of the story launched in 2023’s Mission: Inconceivable — Lifeless Reckoning Half One, is a high-wire act gone horribly mistaken.
The stunts are beautiful, as you’d be proper to imagine as a result of mere indisputable fact that Cruise confirmed as much as make one other M:I film in any respect. In what’s been coyly (and under no circumstances definitively) teased as the ultimate curtain name for Ethan Hunt, the character Cruise has performed since 1996’s Mission: Inconceivable, Cruise jumps from barrel-rolling biplane to barrel-rolling biplane, squeezes via a claustrophobic maze of undetonated underwater missiles in a sunken submarine, and knife-fights in booty shorts, in a most John Wickian flip.
The Ultimate Reckoning has all of it — together with two and a half hours of dead-in-the-water character drama and countless platitudes about Ethan’s future. The sheer variety of flashbacks to earlier franchise installments places The Ultimate Reckoning in a class with Seinfeld’s infamous clip present finale. Seeing two action-movie geniuses like Cruise and writer-director Christopher McQuarrie making a film that’s so typically lethal boring, I puzzled whether or not wrapping up the M:I sequence with a way of finality was the true not possible mission all alongside.
Picture: Paramount Photos
The Ultimate Reckoning (a phrase uttered twice within the film, with deathly reverence) picks up two months after the occasions of 2023’s Lifeless Reckoning, in a world that has been practically consumed by the Entity, an omnipotent AI. Ethan has a plan to take down the robotic overlord, and it as soon as once more requires him to tug off a handful of practically implausible duties together with his crew, which incorporates longtime buddies like Luther (Ving Rhames) and Benji (Simon Pegg), alongside newer pals from Lifeless Reckoning, together with pickpocket Grace (Hayley Atwell) and French murderer Paris (Pom Klemintieff). Assuming their expertise and numerous ridiculous coincidences all come along with pinpoint precision, then maaaaybe he can time the execution of their digital overlord juuuuust proper.
There are obstacles: Mustache-twirling Gabriel (Esai Morales) continually pops out of nowhere to screw with Ethan in hopes of seizing the Entity for his personal management, whereas returning legacy M:I character Eugene Kittridge (Henry Czerny), now director of the CIA, hopes to arrest the rogue Ethan and save the day his personal means. In principle, this could all be one other wild M:I experience.
However whilst a diehard M:I Man, I used to be continually misplaced amongst The Ultimate Reckoning’s expositional phrase salad and aggressive makes an attempt to tie each single story beat again to some occasion within the franchise’s previous. The bar has been raised for Marvel motion pictures that supposedly require an excessive amount of homework forward of viewing. Ultimate Reckoning’s most direct references are groan-worthy: It “solves” a long-running sequence thriller with the grace of Solo’s “We’ll name you Solo” scene. And it turns the Langley NOC-list heist from the 1996 film into the only most essential historic occasion because the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
Tom Cruise, usually a mesmerizing charmer, seems crushed and exhausted all through the talky opening hour of Ultimate Reckoning — maybe as a result of filming the extra thrilling components of the film left him actually crushed and exhausted. The leaden dialogue doesn’t assist, and McQuarrie’s choice to hardly ever maintain the digicam on his main man for quite a lot of seconds means Cruise by no means will get to lock his charisma on the viewers. The choppiness of the modifying, even throughout the talky components, recollects the hyperactive modifying ways that made Taken 3 go viral. A lackluster play-the-hits rating makes even Ethan’s required working scenes limp alongside. The vibes are off.
Bless the Ultimate Reckoning actors who’ve pep of their step anyway! Atwell stays a crafty counterpart to Cruise, all reflexes and wit, and McQuarrie overindulges in her position. Ultimate Reckoning didn’t want an prolonged scene the place an Inuit lady teaches Grace how one can steer a canine sled, however it’s tender. A piece of the film performs much less like the standard globetrotting spy story than a tense Tom Clancy political thriller. However hey, if circumstances are going to entice Ethan in a submarine, a minimum of it’s with a captain performed by Tramell Tillman, who ports over his hilariously mannered presence from Severance to the equally heightened world of Mission: Inconceivable.
And with the U.S. getting ready to atomic warfare, McQuarrie fills warfare rooms with cheeky TV actors, gifting Hannah Waddingham (Ted Lasso), Nick Offerman (Parks and Recreation), and Holt McCallany (Mindhunter) some a lot deserved dramatic spotlights. It’s the sequence’ finest that-guy casting since Mission: Inconceivable III.
Nonetheless, between bursts of character, the plot of Ultimate Reckoning spins in circles. There’s little pressure within the pursuit of the Entity, an invisible risk and the best enemy to the “present, don’t inform” screenwriting adage. McQuarrie levels Ethan’s massive confrontation with the evil Siri in a VR chamber that zips via the AI’s grasp plan prefer it’s the wormhole in 2001: A Area Odyssey. If that sequence felt like something greater than an information dump, it may have been a rush based mostly on the visible design alone. However the Entity blathering the identical strains time and again about Ethan’s future under no circumstances compares to human villains providing inhumane horrors. A speaking blue circle isn’t precisely a standoff with Philip Seymour Hoffman holding a gun to Ethan’s spouse’s head.
To make up for the dearth of chase, McQuarrie cranks up each acquainted type of Inconceivable Mission Power-patented heist operation to most impossibility, to the purpose the place it’s type of exhausting. The distinction between “thrillingly inconceivable” and “preposterously cartoonish” is the distinction between “we want split-second precision” and “we want split-nanosecond precision.” The whole lot in The Ultimate Reckoning, from pinpointing the needle-in-a-haystack location of a lacking submarine to the mind-boggling necessities of incarcerating an AI within the realm of scientific chance, veers over the sting: Unbelievable coincidence, not ability or precision, drives these plans. Additionally, there has by no means been a three-hour film that wanted multiple ticking-time-bomb-defusal sequence. By no means!
Picture: Paramount Photos
However, my god, the precise stunts. McQuarrie’s set items whisk the viewers from the streets of London to the Arctic circle to the mountains of South Africa, and it’s progressively extra awe-inspiring with every new sequence. A crosscut struggle between Ethan and an Entity cultist — sure, we now have these now — whereas his crew members are duking it out with goons in a burning constructing is a spectacle of exactitude. Although Ethan winds up again on an plane service, in what looks as if a shameless callback to High Gun, Cruise actually revives his Maverick do-or-die power when he descends into the icy depths and contends with elaborate water stunts.
The film’s much-teased climactic airplane stunt is the best sequence Cruise has ever dedicated to movie. Whereas lots of the Mission: Inconceivable franchise’s set items have been anchored by one death-defying second (Ethan clinging to the facet of a jet or motorcycling off a cliff), Ethan’s pursuit of Gabriel via the skies goes on and on and on — and I couldn’t get sufficient. Cruise clings to the facet of two completely different planes, flopping in opposition to their sides with each barrel roll, letting his cheeks flap within the wind, and delivering a number of Indiana Jones-style punches as he commandeers every car. There are occasions when he seems to be in full zero G because the second airplane careens via valleys. Something that goes proper for him instantly goes mistaken, and with fixed escalation. It’s breathtaking.
And it’s the grand finale of a foul watch. Ethan Hunt deserves a correct send-off, and never simply in a blaze of action-fueled glory. In 2006, J.J. Abrams gave the character a down-to-Earth high quality and a bunch of shut pals in M:I III. McQuarrie ran with that intimacy when he rewrote Ghost Protocol in 2011 then made the franchise his personal with 2015’s Rogue Nation. His follow-up, 2018’s Mission: Inconceivable — Fallout, noticed Ethan shut the guide on his marriage, hug it out together with his finest buds, and maintain a symphony of stunts from begin to end. It was the right finale. Nevertheless it was so profitable that Cruise and McQuarrie couldn’t resist going again for extra, with this two-part story stretched throughout years.
Lifeless Reckoning was satisfying, in a traditional M:I means, however it wanted a coda to wrap up all its open-ended plots. What was initially deliberate as Lifeless Reckoning Half Two turned The Ultimate Reckoning, which, after watching the film, seems like an apt title for what is probably going the duo’s final swing on the property. Both means, when the credit roll, Tom Cruise’s Mission: Inconceivable sequence feels prefer it’s over for good, whether or not extra sequels are on the way in which or not.
Mission: Inconceivable – The Ultimate Reckoning opens in theaters on Might 23.