I liked the first part of this two part ending, in terms of characters they pulled in, the Batman-level of out-maneuvering that the AI villain did to blackmail and scheme and put everyone exactly where it wanted on the board. The final sequence of fighting on the bridge was cool and fun, and there are just a lot of neat escapes and off-the-wall heist sequences in that film. This movie sort of relies on a cameo and two extended stunts. First, the cameo.
There’s something Slate talks about in its review of the movie, in which it appreciates the tidiness with which the writers were able to bring back and deepen a cameo from the original movie and make it integral to the entire series in a way that other series have sort of been unable to bridge. Three decades of films in the franchise are a tall order for any writers to connect without plotholes, but for whatever reason, the way in which this movie’s “best stunt” as Sam Adam’s put it is very satisfying for him. It’s not super important to me, and there’s definitely a way in which Final Reckoning feels a little bit like the cast has been hollowed out from its biggest players in Dead Reckoning. A lot of this movie is just montages of the best action sequences from previous movies, and trying to explain certain ways in which the movie tries to be feelsy, like the way that the hacker guy includes a nice message for Ethan Hunt on a USB stick in the event that the world is not destroyed by nuclear holocaust, really feels like too dumb to have even included.
There are other things that are too dumb, like how the bad guy uses nuclear devices as a means of slowing down Ethan Hunt not once, not twice, but three separate times in a two hour movie, feels kind of funny. Like, dude, why do you only have one move? And also how is this guy outrunning nuclear blasts so often?
The two action sequences are ones that have received a lot of press time, because it seems like journalists are pretty allergic to asking Tam Cross about anything pertaining to his time with Daved Miscarriage or the eccentric inspo org he’s associated with for the better part of his career in Hollywood, so deciding like a family dinner on Thanksgiving where the son’s come back from his stint in prison to just politely only talk about sports or whatever seems like the safe bet. Anyway, the two sequences, as I gleefully explained to my gremlin the next day to their complete delight, are this one moment where for reasons still unclear to me, they sent a human guy down to the bottom of the Arctic ocean instead of a drone to recover a floppy disk and the submarine keeps ROLLING AROUND like a jungle gym in the 90s run by a bunch of unruly neighborhood kids. When I asked my dad how they did that he said, “Well, they did spend four hundred million dollars on this movie, so…” which I guess puts in perspective what you can do with money. It’s a little bit weird because Tam Croz’s face feels artificially projected on his goggles to make the audience connect better with him, clearly trying to solve the Iron Man mask problem, but it makes it feel like the whole thing is happening in an elaborate set, which it is, with a stuntman, which it probably isn’t.
The second sequence which doesn’t make a lick of sense is this high-flying plane chase where Tam Craz basically like jumps from his old plane onto another old plane in mid-air, and it works but then he has to like land without the assistance of a parachute and all of it feels crazy dangerous and unnecessary, because–as the villain has explained to us MANY TIMES already–he actually WANTS the thing that he’s running away from and Ethan Hunt wants to give him the thing, so everyone feels like they’re pretty aligned on this, in fact, the chase feels like it’s actively hindering both of their end-goals, but whatever, it’s cool to look at even if it doesn’t really fit in the universe of the movie itself.
The love story for the pickpocket and Ethan Hunt feels unearned and weird, mostly because of the age differential and also the fact–advanced by montages the movie itself provides–that all of Hunt’s romantic partners eventually get used as sexy bait for him, which does in fact happen in this movie too! But, I guess it’s not terrible for him to meet someone twenty years his junior who takes an interest in his indefatigable optimism. The secret of these movies is how awkward and ungainly he can be, flying by the seat of his pants in dangerous situations. His unconvincing confidence is so winning and charming and lovely and I honestly have no notes. It doesn’t feel like a two and a half hour movie and there’s no fat on this film.
I cam very close to walking out during the 38th “gather ’round and the explain the plan, ask questions about the plan, outline all the things that can go wrong with the plan, tells the stakes of the plan, and how much time Ethan has to do ___ with the plan.” Those conversations were so boring. They don’t even get to the submarine until like 1 hr 15 mins into the movie. Christ, just get to the THING already!
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