'Mission’ unfulfilled – Exposition crushes overlong ‘Final Reckoning’

First, the good news: “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning” contains the most spectacular stunt sequence in the eight-film franchise.

Hint: It involves the poster image of Tom Cruise dangling from the wing of a midflight biplane. It’s absolutely insane and totally worth seeing on the biggest screen possible.

Unfortunately, the sequence arrives more than two hours into a nearly three-hour espionage adventure that features at least double the setup and exposition as any of the series’ previous films. In addition to Cruise’s cunning Ethan Hunt, at least a dozen other characters talk and talk and talk about stopping the Entity, a rogue A.I. that brings the entire world to the brink of nuclear destruction.

“The Final Reckoning” arguably raises the stakes to a point in which director/co-writer Christopher McQuarrie can’t sustain without multiple sequences of characters explaining the logistics of a faceless enemy’s grand scheme. At least half the dialogue here involves characters explaining what the Entity wants to do, what the characters want to do, what the Entity thinks the characters want to do and/or how the characters want to trick the Entity into doing what the characters want to do.

It's all extremely silly, and honestly, probably not too far from the usual nonsense you’d expect from “Mission: Impossible,” a franchise that counts, “Red light, green light” and “Blue is glue” as some of its greatest lines. The problem here is the quantity compared to the action, and “The Final Reckoning,” beside its incredible climax, sorely lacks the type of suspenseful moments that have populated McQuarrie’s four-“Mission” run.

“The Final Reckoning” also curiously assumes that audiences didn’t pay much attention to the previous film, 2023’s “Dead Reckoning” (which included a “Part One” sub-subtitle on initial release). “Final Reckoning” repeats all the plotty business about the Entity that occasionally bogged down “Dead Reckoning,” then curiously ignores all its substantial character moments (this movie barely even mentions series MVP Ilsa Foust (Rebecca Ferguson) while returning characters Grace (Hayley Atwell) and villain Gabriel (Esai Morales) seem to have their intriguing backstories smoothed over and ignored.

Then, even more curiously, “The Final Reckoning” decides to connect its story to a few random moments throughout the franchise, most notably the 1996 original film (including a returning character and an unnecessary connection to that film’s surprise villain) and a random stray plotline from 2006’s “Mission: Impossible III.” What appears to be an attempt to create a more all-encompassing climax to the entire franchise becomes a distracting time suck from the film’s already sprawling storyline.

The cast remains uniformly good, though almost everyone, from franchise regulars like Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames and Angela Bassett to newcomers like Nick Offerman, Hannah Waddingham and “Severance” breakout Tramell Tillman, aren’t provided with enough to do before the movie whisks away to some new sub-explanation of the main explanation of the Entity’s overarching plan.

As a huge fan of the franchise, it pains me to say that the first two hours of “The Final Reckoning” is easily the worst stretch of the entire franchise, “Mission: Impossible 2” included. Then Cruise takes off in that biplane, but not before we get a brief scene where he puts on the gloves he’ll need to safely grip the wing of a midair plane, despite not yet knowing the existence of the plane or the eventual need to dangle from the wing. But once he’s in the air, blockbuster cinema has never been better. Maybe just arrive at the theater two hours late?

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Tyler Wilson can be reached at [email protected].

    This image shows, from left, Pom Klementieff, Greg Tarzan Davis, Tom Cruise, Simon Pegg and Hayley Atwell in a still from the film "Mission Impossible - The Final Reckoning."