BY ROGER WATSON
So many things were impossible about Mission Impossible – The Final Reckoning. I found it impossible to stay awake for the first hour, resulting in many digs in the rib from my wife. But, as if to prove my point, she nodded off too. Even when I was awake, I found it impossible to work out what was going on or why. I cannot but agree with the reviewer in The Guardian who described the early part of the film as “Ninety minutes in which nothing happens over and over again.”
Then, after the full 169 minutes (which sounds better than 2 hours and 49 minutes) I found it impossible to fathom why I had bothered to come to the cinema in the first place. I gave up on the Mission Impossible franchise long ago after one dreadful film (attractive Asian girl in it) and missed the last few.
Mind you, nothing is as impossible to fathom as the utter bollocks about spacemen and thetans that the leading actor Tom Cruise believes. His dedication to the franchise, apart from the shit loads of money he earns to keep up his dues with the ‘Church’ of Scientology, I cannot help thinking comes from being able to bury, somewhere amidst all the noise, motorbike chases and genuinely death defying stunts, subliminal messages from L. Ron Hubbard, the inventor of Scientology. Still, the public seem to (quite) like the film as it has an 80% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
When the lights go down and before the usual British Board of Film Classification card appears (didn’t they used to be called the censors?), the man himself, the Great Thetan, pops up on screen to thank us all for coming. He and the crew have made the film especially for us, and he thinks we’re going to enjoy it. Sorry, Tom—wrong again.
The BBFC rated the film 12A for ‘violence’, ‘threat and horror’, ‘language’, ‘injury detail’ and ‘flashing/flickering lights’. Clearly, they don’t have a category for films likely to bore you out of your tiny mind.
The first ninety minutes are essentially a self-congratulatory Mission: Impossible highlights reel. Lest we forget what a great chap the lead character is—and by extension, the lead actor—we’re treated to death-defying clips from previous films. A suspiciously bouffant Cruise appears, reuniting with his old buddies amid much hugging and back-slapping as the team reassembles to tackle yet another existential threat to mankind. Viewers must endure plenty of Mission: Impossible™ jargon, like: “We live and die in the shadows, for those we hold close, and those we never meet.” Stirring stuff.
Then comes the mission, should you still care by this point. This time, the villain isn’t a person—it’s a thing, specifically a hyper-advanced AI known as The Entity. It’s basically AI on steroids, hijacking global defence systems, pitting nuclear powers against each other, and threatening mutually assured destruction. Oh, and it can apparently brainwash people into supporting or opposing it. Or something like that.
When the action finally kicks in, it involves Hunt being ejected from a submarine beneath the Arctic ice to retrieve some McGuffin from a sunken Russian sub. The underwater sequences are admittedly impressive—there’s a genuinely tense moment where he strips off his high-tech suit, nearly dies from the bends, and is dramatically resuscitated by his team. A shame they succeeded, really.
The retrieved submarine gizmo must then be combined with another gadget built by one of the team, taken to an underground lair where The Entity lurks inside a massive server bank. If they can just attach the first thing to the second thing, they can trap The Entity inside yet another thing and save the world. Almost. Meanwhile, Simon Pegg’s character gets a collapsed lung.
I say almost because the first thing hasn’t actually been attached to the second thing yet, and doing so requires an aerial chase involving vintage biplanes. Finally, we get the much-hyped stunt sequence—Cruise leaping between planes without safety wires or a parachute, because of course he does. Credit where it’s due: the man’s in phenomenal shape and clearly has no fear of heights. Must make a nice change from first-class lounges.
With all things finally connected, The Entity contained, and the bad guys dead, Hunt miraculously finds a parachute and lands safely. The film isn’t quite over yet, but by this point, I’d completely lost interest and will spare you the rest. If this really is the end of the franchise, I’ll eat my hat. That said, unless the next instalment features Ethan Hunt in a nursing home grappling with catheter tubes and rogue stairlifts, I think we’ve seen the last of Tom Cruise in this role. And frankly? Good.
Roger Watson is a Registered Nurse and Editor-in-Chief of Nurse Education in Practice.