I saw Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning this past Thursday afternoon, the earliest showing that was available in my area. I am a huge fan of the Mission Impossible franchise and Tom Cruise. I love all of these movies. I took my oldest daughter, who is also a huge fan of the franchise and Cruise. Many of the thirteen people in the audience (a solid crowd for a 3:30 p.m. Thursday show in a small-town theater) applauded at the end. The film sports all of the espionage thrills, big set pieces, and nail-biting, edge-of-your seat sequences that we’ve come to expect from these movies, and Cruise’s “hanging-upside-down-off-a-plane stunt sequence” that’s been featured heavily in trailers and promotional material is truly breathtaking. In short, we all had a blast at this movie.
Despite my personal enjoyment, however, objectively, Final Reckoning is one of the weaker entries in the Mission Impossible filmography, ranking slightly above Mission Impossible 2, generally recognized as the worst flick in the franchise.
Co-writer/director Christopher McQuarrie, Cruise, and company are clearly desperate to fashion this film into the culmination of the entire Mission Impossible series. To that end, they’ve included several disparate plot points and characters from previous movies and given them prominence in this one, as though the franchise has been intentionally building to this moment since its inception — except it hasn’t been.
Cole Powell is an arts and media commentator and award-winning singer/songwriter from Jayess, Mississippi, USA. Powell holds degrees in computer technology, liberal studies, and theology. He still wants to be a comic book artist when he grows up and learns to draw.