Please, One More Reckoning Before We Go! Okay, But This is ‘Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning’

May 14, 2025

jmunney Cinema, Movie Reviews , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

The Impossible Man (CREDIT: Paramount Pictures and Skydance)

Starring: Tom Cruise, Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Esai Morales, Pom Klementieff, Henry Czerny, Holt McCallany, Janet McTeer, Nick Offerman, Hannah Waddingham, Tramell Tillman, Angela Bassett, Shea Whigham, Greg Tarzan Davis, Charles Parnell, Mark Gatiss, Rolf Saxon, Lucy Tulugarjuk

Director: Christopher McQuarrie

Running Time: 169 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for Near-Death Experiences

Release Date: May 23, 2025 (Theaters)

What’s It About?: It’s all come down to this. All those previous impossible missions that Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) pulled off over the decades? We thought they were more or less self-contained. But instead, it turns out that they were all part of a vast global conspiracy to sow widespread confusion and establish a new world order. This is set to be established by an artificial intelligence entity known as, in fact, “The Entity.” It is apparently going to accomplish this by infecting every connected device on the planet and then – as far as I can tell – launching every nuclear weapon and also just generally making everyone distrustful of everyone else. Some guy named Gabriel (Esai Morales) is trying to usher The Entity along to its destiny, while Ethan and his IMF crew attempt to do the opposite with their precision timing and the latest batch of stakes-raising, death-defying stunts.

What Made an Impression?: They’ve Got So Much to Say: The Final Reckoning definitely gives off end-of-the-series vibes, although I’m sure Cruise and the rest of the creative team are open to future installments for as long as he remains ageless. In the meantime, though, this chapter definitely closes the book on something. And it’s a big ol’ slam, clocking in at nearly three hours. Those minutes are filled with a trio of major set pieces, and plenty of talking in between about how those set pieces will be accomplished. And when I say “plenty,” I mean, “oh so very many plenty.” I really don’t think there needed to be this much dialogue for such an action-oriented flick. That’s not to say that the Mission: Impossible flicks ought to be silent (although that might be kind of cool if they were), but I personally would have advised a sleeker design.
Hey, Remember Those Times Way Back When?: When it comes to long-running action series, M:I is kind of the antithesis of Fast & Furious, insofar as the former sheds several of its supporting characters in between installments without any fanfare, whereas the latter seems to just collecting them for perpetuity until it’s bursting at the seams. To be fair, there are still a few IMF mainstays hanging around, although Ethan’s female counterparts have a tendency to disappear no matter how beloved they are by fans. The Final Reckoning takes a somewhat different approach by explicitly drawing upon some of the earlier entries in ways that would have felt impossible just a few years earlier. And that’s kind of thrilling for those of us whose favorite M:I chapters seemed like they’d been completely forgotten.
Timely Gobbledygook: Cautionary tales about artificial intelligence are so hot right now. But frankly The Entity doesn’t have anything to do with any real-life A.I. On the contrary, it’s just a profoundly vague MacGuffin. Or should I call it the villain? Can the MacGuffin be the villain? I think it is in this case. Anyway, it’s all just an excuse for the most baroque modern blockbuster action around, so whatever.

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is Recommended If You Like: Parking your butt while the obsessive man does his thing

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Entities

It’s the End of the World as We Know It, and ‘Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One’ Feels Fine

July 5, 2023

jmunney Cinema, Movie Reviews , , , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Which one’s Dead and which one’s Reckoning? (CREDIT: Paramount Pictures and Skydance)

Starring: Tom Cruise, Hayley Atwell, Esai Morales, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Vanessa Kirby, Henry Czerny, Pom Klementieff, Shea Whigham, Greg Tarzan Davis

Director: Christopher McQuarrie

Running Time: 163 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for A Reckless Relationship with Gravity

Release Date: July 12, 2023 (Theaters)

What’s It About?: This might just be the most impossible mission yet! That may sound like hyperbole for a series that’s famously death-defying, but honestly it lives up to the hype. Ethan Hunt (the freakishly indefatigable Tom Cruise) and his pared-down IMF team must somehow figure out how to dispatch a new enemy that threatens to wipe out humanity as we know it by reverting society to an analog dystopia. Of course, that premise is just a setup for the shameless stunts and sizzling globetrotting. In addition to this all-encompassing terror, Ethan is also being chased down by some law enforcement types who aren’t so sure he should be able to operate without impunity anymore.

What Made an Impression?: What’s All This Now?: The Mission: Impossible series combines elements of espionage, big budgets extravaganza, and practical stunt work, all genres that are notorious for being accompanied by nonsensical plots. And Dead Reckoning Part One might just be the nonsensical one yet! As far as I could tell, the enemy wasn’t exactly human, but it could take human form. Or maybe I misunderstood that. But I don’t think I did! The opening scene provided a very thorough explanation, after all. Anyway, I’m pretty sure that Esai Morales plays the villain in question, but confusion still lingered with me by the end. If you find yourself just as confused as I was, you can still enjoy the movie, though you’ll also probably find yourself mulling it over more than you need to.
New and Old, Which One’s New?: In terms of character carryover, Mission: Impossible is kind of like the hall-of-mirrors version of Fast & Furious, if some of those mirrors were covered by blackout blinds. In addition to Cruise as Hunt, you can rely on Ving Rhames and Simon Pegg to be there as his regular IMF buddies. But on the flip side, you could have a love interest like M:I 3‘s Michelle Monagahn just unceremoniously disappear. There’s also a little bit of room for new favorites like Rebecca Ferguson and Vanessa Kirby to remain after their initial appearances, and for new recruits like Hayley Atwell to seamlessly find their place. And we can even reach way back for originals like Henry Czerny who were there in the beginning but have taken most of the sequels off, and you can be tricked into thinking that they’ve been there all along. Basically, the casting in this franchise is a magic act.
So Much Delivered, So Much More to Come: But let’s finally get down to the bread and butter. The best setpieces all involve a climactic train ride. There’s a cliffside jump to arrive on the train, fights within and outside the train, and a desperate scramble to stay alive and not fall off the train. Before that choo-choo checks in, you might actually wonder what’s taking so long for Dead Reckoning to go for broke as much as usual. But once it does, the massively wound ball of tension lets loose and doesn’t give you any time to catch your breath. And this is just Part One! A nearly three-hour opening chapter, after that. (Or the first half of the seventh chapter, from another point of view.) This is just the latest 2023 blockbuster that forces you to wait another year for the end of the story, but you won’t feel deprived. Dead Reckoning Part One can stand fully on its own, and quite frankly, you’ll need all those extra months to recover.

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One is Recommended If You Like: Saying “Huh?” and “Woo-hoo!” at the same time

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Trains

The 4 Types of TV-to-Film Adaptations

December 4, 2019

jmunney Cinema, Television , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

CREDIT: NBC

Adapting TV shows into feature-length films is one of the many regular ways that the cinema industry keeps the reboot process alive. As a devoted Human Being, I am particularly invested in the possibility of a Community adaptation to complete the #sixseasonsandamovie prophecy. This has led me to consider two important quandaries: 1) what different types of tv-to-film adaptations exist, and 2) which ones are most likely to result in box office and/or critical success? Over the course of pondering this topic, I have come up with the following taxonomy:

More

This Is a Movie Review: Mission: Impossible – Fallout

August 12, 2018

jmunney Cinema, Movie Reviews , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

CREDIT: Paramount Pictures

Mission: Impossible – Fallout is to Ethan Hunt what Spectre is to James Bond, but not that (transparently) insane and mostly successful. But what I really want to talk about is this idea that Hunt is irreplaceable. The conjecture that there is only person for the most dangerous jobs in the world is certainly compelling, but is it healthy? If we’re talking about how it applies to reality, certainly not. For the sake of the world and for the sake of their personal lives, experts and superheroes should have backups and successors in place. But when we’re talking about the cinematic medium, the calculus is a little different … or is it?

M:I isn’t the only spy and/or insane stunt franchise that has been killing it in the past 20 years, which means we’ve got our backups. And when Tom Cruise finally calls it quits (in a billion years or so), maybe a worthy Ethan Hunt successor will somehow run into our hearts. In the universe where the IMF exists, Hunt really shouldn’t place the entire weight of the world on his shoulders. But since this world is a fictional place, it’s working as it’s supposed to.

I give Mission: Impossible – Fallout 4 Cliffhangs out of 5 Shifting Allegiances.