All the screenshots in this post were taken directly from the movie by me.
It's no secret that Mission Impossible: Final Reckoning is one of the best franchise conclusions seen in recent years, something particularly surprising considering that despite the connections between each entry (common characters, similar directing style, and conflicts), each film generally featured an isolated adventure for Ethan Hunt and his companions Luthor and Benji.
The point is that for the past couple of years, amid the proliferation of superhero films and the increasingly frequent existence of sequels and remakes that did nothing more than attract audiences without delivering any genuine quality, it seems that the true purpose of Mission Impossible has mutated, and what was once an attractive gimmick (the idea of Ton Cruise performing all these absurd stunts in real life) has become a flagship that would symbolically confront the lamentable landscape of modern cinema, obviously, without neglecting the good script.
This is something that, far from recontextualizing the franchise, served to give each installment much more weight, and, at least partially, I feel this was one of the reasons why Fallout worked so well in 2018, and why Final Reckoning's predecessor, Dead Reckoning, left us wanting more in 2023.
The result is a film that draws from the previous seven works, riddled with nods and returning characters to connect all the missions Ethan has undertaken (even if it doesn't always make much sense), without neglecting the ability to enjoy it even if we know nothing about the franchise.
With a running time of almost three hours (which, by the way, go by quite quickly), Mission: Impossible: Final Reckoning dedicates a considerable portion of its footage to subtle homage, using clips from the films that came before them, even if their visual style is different, and embracing its own legacy with a love that is simply contagious.
This, coupled with the fact that the central conflict arises around an artificial intelligence eager to destroy the world (something that, knowing Cruise and director-writer Christopher McQuarrie, was no accident), ends up providing an entertaining and moving experience, which perhaps suffers from having a somewhat chaotic pacing, but which perfectly fulfills its purpose.
Score taken from my Letterboxd account.
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