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The headline that came on the back of 2024\u2019s Mission:Impossible \u2013 Dead Reckoning Part One<\/em> was that it didn\u2019t make the sort of box office dough that Ethan Hunt and his IMF crew usually pull in. So the prospect of a direct sequel seems like a bit of a gamble considering that it\u2019s the continuation of a story that not enough people were actually that interested in. <\/p>\n Yet there\u2019s a sense that the makers of Mission: Impossible: The Final Reckoning<\/em> are biting a thumb at the naysayers and playing the hits one more time, albeit with a little bit more focus on the previous feature instalments, and one particularly moving and intricate callback to Brian de Palma\u2019s OG M:I from 1995, when Tom Cruise was rocking spiky rather than floppy cut.<\/p>\n The antagonist of this new film, who was introduced in Part One, is The Entity, an out-of-control AI that we discover, unsurprisingly, is male when Ethan has a chance to interface with him directly. This digital superbeing is in the process of commandeering the global arsenal of nuclear weapons and causing a doomsday event \u2013 but not before its been safely nestled in its own indestructible server room hidey-hole so it can await a new civilisation to grow out of the ashes, and likely terrorise them too.<\/p>\n The logic goes that the best and only way to defeat a digital menace is to go fully analog, and so the gang kinda half-heartedly abide by those rules and head to a sunken sub in the Arctic to retrieve a little hard drive thingy which they\u2019re then able to connect to a little pen drive virus and then, hopefully, The Entity goes away. It\u2019s a little more intricate than that, but the gist is all you need to be able to get along with this high concept stuff. As an ode to the analog, it\u2019s certainly worthwhile, but its commitment to that theme is rather half-assed.<\/p>\n McQuarrie is a writer who earned his spurs on heist and noir movies, and the structure of the Mission: Impossible<\/em> titles tend to riff on a similar structure. It\u2019s one where the audience is regaled with the plan in immaculate detail, and then we get to see it executed, often with many hurdles, upsets and wrong turns. In this case, the main \u201cheist\u201d is so complex and relies on so many different variables coming together, that it ends up not making a whole lot of logical sense. It\u2019s almost as if the stressful variations suppress the rules that have been carefully laid out beforehand.<\/p>\n Cruise\u2019s performance in this and many of the McQuarrie-helmed M:I films is one of desperate fury, as he\u2019s required to oscillate directly between acrobatic action man mode and an exposition delivery node, with a heavy side dose of pretending not to notice that I\u2019m the messiah. Yet his \u201cacting\u201d almost transcends the traditional definition of the term, and while his face is of course a key asset in his charisma arsenal, he\u2019s the rare example of a star who is willing to express via every part of his body. Robert Bresson would approve!<\/p>\n It\u2019s also nice to see him locking horns with Esai Morales as The Entity\u2019s bootboy, Gabriel, who makes ashy designer stubble and aviator shades look so, so evil. And you probably have to hark back to the days of classic Hollywood to see a mainstream action film where its two main stars are over 60 years old. <\/p>\n Elsewhere, the supporting cast get less of a shake than they did in Part One, with Haley Atwell\u2019s Grace and Pom Klementieff\u2019s atomic blond Paris relegated to gun-toting assistants. Simon Pegg\u2019s Benji gets a few decent scenes, yet it\u2019s sad that his character is no longer a comic relief, as his witty interventions in the earlier films certainly relieved them of their slightly oppressive sense of seriousness.<\/p>\n At its worst, Mission: Impossible<\/em> under the McQuarrie watch has merged lanes with the similarly-inclined (and more overtly throwaway) Fast and Furious<\/em> franchise, and were there to be more of these films in the future (the door is certainly left open), then a return to a smaller, more humane palette with odds that amount to a bit more than \u201ceveryone\u2019s gonna get blown to smithereens,\u201d would be most welcome. Next time, rather than a grand nostalgic callback to the 1995 film, why not heed some of its dramatic lessons too.<\/p>\n To keep celebrating the craft of film, we have to rely on the support of our members. Join Club LWLies today and receive access to a host of benefits.<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\nGet more Little White Lies<\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n