NEW YORK (OSV News) – Tom Cruise takes his eighth turn as infinitely resourceful spy Ethan Hunt in the grand-scale adventure “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning” (Paramount). The stakes for which Ethan is playing this time are nothing short of global and the odds against him… well, seemingly impossible. Sound familiar?
Picking up where the last installment — 2023’s “Dead Reckoning Part One” — left off, the plot once again pits Ethan against two of the three principal adversaries he battled in that outing. The first is the rogue AI system called the Entity and the other a mysterious villain, known only as Gabriel (Esai Morales), who would like to manipulate the Entity for his own malign purposes.
What with the Entity rapidly gaining control of the world’s various nuclear armories — with the ultimate goal of wiping out humanity and starting afresh — there is some urgency to the matter. So Ethan and his duo of tech-savvy closest collaborators, Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames) and Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg), swing quickly into action.
Also aiding Ethan is Grace (Hayley Atwell), the expert pickpocket for whom he fell during the previous picture. As for CIA official-turned-president Erika Sloane (Angela Bassett), her support for the oft-insubordinate Ethan is, perhaps understandably, reluctant and tentative.
Dogged pursuit is more to the fore than clever turns of the table in returning director and co-writer Christopher McQuarrie’s extension of a franchise that first appeared on the small screen in the mid-1960s and in cinemas in the mid-1990s. So the proceedings, although ceaselessly energetic, mostly lack the kind of witty surprises showcased in earlier chapters.
But the relentless action is kept largely bloodless and the script, on which McQuarrie again partnered with Erik Jendresen, rarely runs afoul of good taste. As a result, a wide range of viewers can take in the few substantive themes on which the screenplay touches.
These include lessons about sacrificing personal interests to the greater good, the possibility for wrongdoers to achieve a kind of civic redemption as well as the perils of proportionalist ethics. Viewers of faith will also note that the Entity is referred to as the anti-god, an apt label given its relish for — or, at least, indifference toward — mass destruction.
Such forays into seriousness are, of course, mere detours. So it’s not long before we return to the gun battles, fisticuffs, martial arts moves and feats of derring-do with which McQuarrie et al. are obviously much more concerned.
Absurdly grandiose, you object? Wildly implausible as soon as subjected to even cursory analysis? Quit yer bellyaching and pass the popcorn.
The film contains constant mostly stylized but occasionally harsh violence with slight gore, a scene of torture, brief gruesome imagery, at least one mild oath and a few crude expressions. The OSV News classification is A-II — adults and adolescents. The Motion Picture Association rating is PG-13 — parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.
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