Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning – Movie Review

* Disclaimer- spoilers!
 
Seeing as we got round to Mission Impossible 9, maybe a better name for the series would be Mission Inevitable …
 
As happens in many action movie franchises, each consecutive movie is condemned to keep expanding the plots, escalating the stakes, and vilifying the villain, in an ever-spiralling tautology of the original film. The final instalment of the 9 movie Mission Impossible franchise is the epitome of overblown, with its 171-minute run time.
 
If I tallied the number of times Ethan Hunt should realistically have died, I’m sure I would have gotten to be about 30. Each time our enigmatic super spy evades death, it becomes less impressive, as the audience becomes desensitised to all the car chases, false faces, and aerial aces. And defusing bombs in the very last second. Again.

  
I’m a sucker for protagonists who meet their match in their nemesis. Think Batman and the Joker, John McClane and Hans Gruber, Neo and Agent Smith. As the ultimate movie in the franchise, one would expect Final Reckoning’s Gabriel to be a worthy antagonist to our seemingly invincible hero. Alas, Gabriel’s pitiful comeuppance was almost slapstick, (while providing a sting in the tail, wink wink!), and it undermined all the build-up to their confrontation.
 
I was thrilled that Christopher McQuarrie provided us with not just one, but TWO sequences of Tom Cruises’ iconic, meme-able running. I don’t need to understand the plot to know he’s gotta be somewhere because he’s gotta save something, and he’s gotta do it quickly!
 
Final Reckoning volleyed between preparatory scenes of expository dialogue, and then diving straight to the anticipated action. However tacky the dialogue, it is a necessary lifeline for the audience to cling to. Without it, we would all be made to fumble through the changing locations and time stamps, and find ourselves stranded by the complexity of the plot. The ping-ponging bounced us between past and present, told in voiceovers and flash-forwards. I appreciate that no time was wasted transitioning between ‘the plan’ and ‘the action’, lest the movie drag out its already indulgent run time. However, Final Reckoning’s constant high intensity was like a defibrillator that didn’t allow its plot, characters, or the audience to stop and take a breath. In doing so, it trades suspense, friction, and emotional weight, for seamless, efficient action. To be fair, it is an action movie that does a good job of cramming as much action into its run time as possible, so maybe I should let it go.
 
This time round, we were blessed with some new additions to the IMF team. However, the movie did little to develop their characters in real time, let alone introduce them well enough for me to remember their names. But at least they proved themselves to be ‘a goodie’, as their gun skills were far superior to the ‘baddies’, and they all could have been models.
 
Mission Impossibles’ Ethan Hunt was portrayed to be an altruistic, almost asexual, protector of humanity, rather than a suave womaniser spy. So I found it tonally jarring as well as offensive, when I was subjected to such an overt shot of Grace’s chest as she attempts to resuscitate Ethan. The camera’s gaze, akin to a pubescent teenage boy presented Grace more as a Bond Girl than a seriously-to-be-taken female counterpart.
 
With ChatGPT becoming part of our daily lives and the notion that Skynet is just around the corner, MI:9 addresses the threat of technology with usch hyperbole that it borders on the absurd. Thanks to the cinematic farce, I emerged with the false reassurance, “Well! I’m glad that isn’t a real problem for me to have to deal with!”. Ahhh, if only the solution were as simple as containing the Entity in a not-yet-invented 500 Terabyte vessel and reverting to analogue technology forevermore. I wouldn’t mind trying to get my hands on something of the sort in Officeworks… I’ll keep my eyes peeled.

 
Okay, maybe I need to give Christopher McQuarrie and Tom Cruise some slack. Final Reckoning does a great job of catering to mainstream fans of the series.
 
When the action kicks in during the second half, Final Reckoning gave viewers some jaw dropping set pieces. The wordless 10-minute sequence where Cruise is tumbled inside the hull of a sunken nuclear sub, as it rolls towards the edge of a trench parallels the thalassophobic intensity of the third act of Titanic.
 
And through the culmination of 30 years of pushing boundaries, is Cruise. At 62 years old, you’ve got to admire his commitment to the franchise trying to show us something we’ve never seen before and ultimately succeeding. Part One: Dead Reckoning, MI:9’s prequel, warned us about the Entity and how it would threaten the human race by encroaching on humans’ creativity. I love that Tom Cruise issues another salvo against AI by leaning on the idea that Ethan Hunt is so wacky that no algorithm could ever possibly predict his behaviour.
 
The movie provides humanity with a panacea against algorithmic totalitarianism. In times of extreme adversity, leaders should take risks, deviate from the formula, and trust others, when it may seem illogical to do so. This theme would have been more powerful, had it not been messaged within a blockbuster whose success at the box office is guaranteed not because it took creative risks, but because it adhered to a formula.
 
I’m aware that action movies aren’t to be taken too seriously, and indeed, this movie had me scoffing the whole way through. Give it a watch if you are craving movie popcorn and 3 hours of impressive stunts, but if you’re wanting a movie that has something beneath the surface of its glossy screen, then you may be disapproving!

* By Izzy Ercleve

Izzy Ercleve is a Gen Zedder, Shenton College graduate and is taking a gap year before making big life decisions. A writing enthusiast, she is interning at Fremantle Shipping News to learn more about the world of journalism!

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