Overview
Ethan Hunt and team continue their search for the terrifying AI known as the Entity — which has infiltrated intelligence networks all over the globe — with the world's governments and a mysterious ghost from Hunt's past on their trail. Joined by new allies and armed with the means to shut the Entity down for good, Hunt is in a race against time to prevent the world as we know it from changing forever.
(Notes from the Podcast episode 258 – available HERE – where myself and Lee both share our full thoughts.
McQuarrie and Cruise team up one (potentially) last time for the MI franchise in a film that was so delayed by the strikes and other factors that it appears to have been re-engineered as a stand alone film, whilst still serving as a wrap up of any loose threads from across the series. Thus the struggling first act that is referenced by so many reviews, which seems to be treading familiar ground for those who watched Dead Reckoning Part One – but this didn’t bother me as it was nice to be reminded of things, and it allowed for the film to slow-build until the second act kicked in and the story was propelled forwards. Without it, I feel that directly jumping into the deluge of action would have felt like this was more just a tacked on “final act” of the previous film, rather than standing on its own as an entry.
Rolf Saxon returning as Donloe, who we saw in the first film, was more than just a “remember him” cameo, but actually served a purpose and gave that minor character a wonderful story arc since the last we saw him.
I love the characters in this series and how they became fleshed out over the recent films – Kitteridge for example is another who has been lent more depth in the previous film that is picked up on here.
It would have been nice to have had Renner reprise his role as Brandt to bring some completion to his character also.
It may be the Final Reckoning, but it does leave the door open for further MI projects to follow – personally I’d love to see a move to serialized TV, bringing the franchise full circle. As it stands Final Reckoning is a fitting closure for Cruise’s tenure
