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Scotsman
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning review: 'good old-fashioned movie magic'
Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter, get the latest news and reviews from our specialist arts writers Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning (12A) ★★★★ Thirty years on from the first Mission: Impossible, Tom Cruise is back for one last hurrah as IMF agent Ethan Hunt, ready — nay, destined — to save humanity yet again. Picking up several months on from the previous instalment, Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning concludes not just the two-part story begun in that film, but, apparently, the series as a whole, going to great lengths to create the illusion that it's had some kind of overarching continuity all along. Tom Cruise plays Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning | Paramount Pictures and Skydance Clearly it hasn't, but that doesn't stop returning director Christopher McQuarrie (who's helmed the last four films) from flashing back through the franchise's greatest hits, throwing in some deep cut references to the first film, and cheekily adding some out-of-nowhere reveals to link hitherto insignificant supporting characters to Ethan's past. He even retrofits this two-parter's malevolent AI villain, the Entity, with a backstory of its own, connecting it to Mission: Impossible III in order to make Ethan more culpable in this new threat's existence. If Cruise and McQuarrie brought the series to an organic end point with the spectacular Mission: Impossible — Fallout (the sixth film), think of these final two movies as a very long encore or victory lap. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Cruise's own self-styled status as the saviour of big screen entertainment has also been baked into the plot this time, not just in the outlandish, turned-up-to-eleven acts of insane derring-do he performs for real for our viewing pleasure, but in the fact that Ethan's now achieved messiah-like status. Characters refer to him as 'the chosen one' and he's plagued with visions and premonitions after the Entity gives him a Matrix-style glimpse of the future. There's also a death-and-resurrection scene, and, in lieu of a loincloth and a whipping, he gets embroiled in a smack-down with a knife-wielding bad guy while stripped down to his pants. Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt, Simon Pegg as Benji Dunn and Hayley Atwell as Grace in Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning | Paramount Pictures and Skydance That the film is thoroughly ridiculous goes without saying, but as with previous instalment Dead Reckoning, its self-serious tone can sometimes make all the relay-race exposition scenes a slog, particularly in its early stages as the film glumly lays out what's at stake as its truth-distorting AI villain's destabilising effect on the world pushes it to the brink of nuclear annihilation. But for all its narrative flaws, clunky dialogue and failure to explain why Simon Pegg's goofball tech-nerd Benji has been elevated to the franchise's second most important character (especially when Jeremy Renner was right there waiting in the wings for two movies), Cruise's own willingness to go all out to make cinema truly exciting eclipses any deficiencies. Tom Cruise plays Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning | Paramount Pictures and Skydance A huge set-piece on a sunken submarine is a masterful mix of practical and digital effects and good old-fashioned movie magic, but it's the well-publicised biplane finale that really kicks things up a gear. The most outrageous thing he's done in the series to date, the stunt is a franchise high that sees the 62-year-old crawling over (and hanging off) the wings an analogue plane mid-flight as if it's a jungle gym. And he's not just showing off either. The vertigo-inducing close-ups and medium shots of Cruise giving a proper performance while hanging on for dear life reinforce the film's anti-AI themes while also throwing down a challenge to the rest of the industry to raise its game in the face of artistry cannibalising tech. There's no substitute for the real deal. Cruise's career is the proof.
Los Angeles Times
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Cannes: Even bad exposition can't trip up Tom Cruise, flying high with ‘Mission Impossible — The Final Reckoning'
CANNES, France — Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt arrived in France in 1996's 'Mission: Impossible' clinging to a high speed train through the Chunnel, pursued and nearly skewered by a helicopter. It was, as the French might say, une entrée dramatique. In 2018's 'Mission: Impossible — Fallout,' he leapt from an airplane to plummet four-and-a-half miles down to the glass roof of Paris' Grand Palais and now, for the big finale of his franchise, 'Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning,' he's come to conquer the Cannes Film Festival. One boisterous fan outside the premiere shoved her Chihuahua at Cruise so he could see it was wearing a pink sweatshirt with his face. Another brandished a DVD of 2000's 'Mission: Impossible 2,' arguably the worst entry in the series. Cruise took a photo with her anyway. 'Le selfie!' the red-carpet announcer cried. The series hasn't been kind to its French actors: Emmanuelle Béart was shot, Jean Reno blown up by exploding chewing gum, Léa Seydoux kicked out of a window at the Burj Khalifa. (Pom Klementieff, whose character's name is Paris, has survived to co-star in this eighth entry.) Yet, you didn't have to parler français to glean the excitement on the ground. This is only Cruise's third trip to Cannes and it took him nearly half an hour to walk the 60 yards of red carpet, an exhausting amount of waving, even for someone lauded for his cardio. He took care to acknowledge everyone who'd come to cheer, even trotting back down a few steps to make eye contact and thump on his heart for the fans in the corner flank. In 2022, as part of the lead-up to 'Top Gun: Maverick,' the blockbuster that would defibrillate the pandemic box office, Cruise received an honorary Palme d'Or and a salute from eight zipping French jets. During his first visit, for 1992's 'Far and Away,' times were different and he felt free to be outspoken, telling the press that the then-recent Rodney King verdict 'sickened me.' Today, he seems to feel the weight of championing the theatrical experience, just as Ethan Hunt is repeatedly forced to shoulder the burden of saving the world. Neither of them truly has the freedom to 'choose to accept it.' More than any of his movie star peers, Cruise seems aware that someone has to symbolize an increasingly bygone era of filmmaking, to be this century's Charlie Chaplin. The vibe before the screening of 'Final Reckoning' was a bit bar mitzvah. The DJ alternated between dance-floor classics — Kool & the Gang, Joan Jett — and remixes of Lalo Schifrin's pulsating 'Mission: Impossible' theme, one by four beatboxers who mimicked police sirens, another classed-up by a live saxophone and violins. This year's big Cannes fashion headline is that women are no longer allowed to wear 'voluminous' frocks on the steps. Nevertheless, Hayley Atwell, who plays Grace, a pickpocket-turned-secret-agent, wore a gown on the daring end of puffy. Red with large flares at her hips and ankles, she resembled the vintage biplane Cruise dangles from in the film. He could have clung onto her elbow for a teaser. But when the movie started, the mood turned funereal. This farewell to Ethan Hunt begins with a three-decade-spanning montage of Cruise that could double as the intro to his inevitable honorary Oscar. 'I want to thank you for a lifetime of unrelenting and devoted service,' Angela Bassett's President Erika Sloane tells Ethan in the opening minute. Later, she slips him a code with an important date — May 22, 1996 — which also happens be the day the 'Mission: Impossible' franchise launched. The whole film is a panegyric: big speeches and weighty moments with very little sense of play. Tonally, it starts with an ending and keeps on ending for the next 2 hours and 49 minutes. The eight 'Mission' films can be cleaved into two groups. The first four made a point of swapping directors and moods and even Ethan's core identity: Brian De Palma made him a jaundiced naif; John Woo, a hot-blooded flirt; J.J. Abrams, a devoted husband; Brad Bird, a near-mute human cartoon. The last four are all helmed by Christopher McQuarrie (who's co-written this script with Erik Jendresen) but neither has added much to his personality. We're told, over and over, that Ethan is a gambler and a rule-breaker — and paradoxically, that he's the only human worthy of our trust, an odd thing to say about a spy who wears masks of other people's faces like party hats. Of all the 'Mission: Impossible' films, this is the only one that needs you to remember what happened in the previous entry, 2023's 'Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One,' which introduced an all-knowing AI villain called the Entity and its equally unemotional minion Gabriel (Esai Morales) that made a fun foil for Cruise himself, as a sinister duo that values digital trickery over human sweat. Now, the Entity intends to annihilate humanity in four days unless it can be taken offline by a key that accesses a gizmo in the Arctic Sea that connects to a whatsit that Ving Rhames's weary Luther is attempting to invent from a makeshift hospital bed somewhere in the subway tunnels of London. A grunting Cruise batters a goon while huffing, 'You spend! Too much time! On the internet!' That last film managed to introduce Atwell's Grace and collect the key while still enjoying a sense of play, like an axle-cracking Fiat chase through Rome and flirtations manifested via close-up magic. Here, the plot weighs everything down. Not just the threat-of-extinction stuff, which includes Bassett's POTUS debating which American city to blow up as a preemptive gesture, but by its own irritating God's-eye omniscience that rarely allows the suspense to spool out in the present. The editing is always cutting to the past or the future. There's flashbacks to things that happened five minutes earlier and flash-forwards to how a stunt could look instead of just getting on with it. Just as exhausting is how the entire cast trades lines of exposition to explain Ethan's daredevil feats before he actually does them. There are almost no conversations, only premonitions and plans delivered in bullet-points like a group research project. No one steps on anyone else's dramatic pauses. They may as well be reciting how to build an IKEA Billy bookcase. I can't think of anything more thrill-stifling, even with cinematographer Fraser Taggart lighting everybody's eyeballs to look so shiny that the actors continually appear on the verge of tears. Still, even within those limitations, Simon Pegg is delightful as Hunt's longtime tech-whiz teammate Benji, as are new and returning ensemble members Tramell Tillman, Lucy Tulugarjuk and Rolf Saxon, the latter of whom plays a throwback character once threatened with manning a radar tower in Alaska — a punishment that did, in fact, come to pass. But Cruise is reason audiences will, and should, see 'Final Reckoning' on a large and loud screen. His Ethan continues to survive things he shouldn't. (One too-miraculous rescue attempts to distract us from asking questions by inserting an out-of-place close-up of Atwell's heaving bosom.) Yet, what I've most come to appreciate about Ethan is that he doesn't try to play the unflappable hero. Clinging to the chassis of an airplane with the wind plastering his hair to his forehead and oscillating his gums like bulldog in a convertible, he is, in fact, exceedingly flapped. The flight chase is fantastic. It's what Isaac Newton might have made if he'd demonstrated velocity by placing an apple in a bucket and whipping it in circles. But even its exhilaration gets bested by a centerpiece underwater sequence where Cruise scuba dives alone in silence suffering stunts that you cannot believe. I couldn't tell you how long he swam — at some point, my heart stopped — but there are images of vertical sheets of water and the star in shivering, fetal isolation that felt like the franchise wasn't just trying to top itself, but hoping to best 'Titanic' and '2001: A Space Odyssey.' As the sound design rumbled with queasy creaks over shots of a submarine teetering on the edge of a deep-sea cliff, I found myself thinking most of all of that famous sequence of a frozen shack sliding off a cliff in Charlie Chaplin's 1925 'The Gold Rush,' which celebrates its centennial anniversary this fall. By coincidence or grand design, a gorgeously restored 'The Gold Rush' was also the first movie screened at this year's Cannes. If there's a Cannes in 2125, maybe it'll play a 100-year-old Tom Cruise classic. It won't be this 'Mission: Impossible' over the first, third or fourth. Regardless, I bet the fans will still be cheering.
Wall Street Journal
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Wall Street Journal
‘Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning' Review: The Cult of Tom Cruise
'Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning' (opening May 23) features a key in the form of a cross, a St. Christopher medal and references to Noah's Ark but reserves its reverence for its onscreen savior, messiah and chosen one. 'A Tom Cruise production,' the credits tell us, and you won't forget it for a single moment. That need not be a bad thing. The producer-star delivered the two best offerings in the series since the original 1996 feature with 2018's 'Mission: Impossible—Fallout' and 2023's 'Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part One' (calling the latest edition Part Two might have been a subtitle too many). This time, though, the story falters.
Yahoo
14-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Trump's movie tariff plot twist: What's a Hollywood movie anyway?
The latest installment of the Donald Trump Cinematic Universe has an audacious plot line: The protagonist wants to put a 100% tariff on all movies made abroad to restore a troubled American film industry to its former glory. But the critics aren't impressed. 'The idea is dumb,' Howard Berry, a film historian at Britain's University of Hertfordshire, told CNN. 'Tariffs aren't going to revitalize a beleaguered industry in Hollywood. Tariffs are just going to make films more expensive to make, and so we'll have fewer of them.' Last week, the American president said he had instructed US commerce and trade authorities to place the hefty levy on movies produced abroad to revive a 'dying' Tinseltown. The announcement marks the first time Trump has targeted services rather than goods with his tariffs. Trump may be right about one problem: As countries such as Canada, Ireland and the United Kingdom have lured US filmmakers with generous tax incentives, many Americans in the film industry have been left short of work. Major streaming platforms have also tightened their belts in recent years as they look to make a profit, rather than simply throwing money at new content to attract subscribers. But Trump's solution — slapping tariffs on what is often the product of international partnerships involving American filmmakers — will be both hard to implement and ineffective, industry experts told CNN. Here's why a return to Hollywood's heyday may just be the stuff of movies. Much like an American car needs parts from abroad, so too do Hollywood films rely on people and places overseas — and increasingly so. Berry at the University of Hertfordshire gave the example of 'Mission: Impossible — Fallout,' a 2018 film co-produced by companies based in the United States, China, Norway and France, with some scenes filmed in the UK. 'You look at the opening titles and you see about five production logos before you get into the start of the film,' he said. 'China's Alibaba Pictures is one of the (logos) right up there at the front.' Kirsty Bell, the chief executive of Goldfinch, a British film production company, argued that the international nature of many movies makes it very difficult to pinpoint their country of origin. 'If you shot a week in the UK, a week in America and a week in Canada, what nationality is the film? And then you do (post-production) in the UK. Where does that leave you?' she told CNN. High-profile examples of so-called 'runaway production' — a term describing the flight of movie production from California, the home of Hollywood — can be found in the UK. 'Wicked' and 'Barbie,' two of the biggest blockbusters of recent years, were principally shot in studios in the south-east of England. According to the British Film Institute, last year, major American film studios and streaming platforms spent more than $1.8 billion producing movies in the country, a rise of 49% from 2023. Britain's Sands Films is one beneficiary of spending by the US film industry. The film production company made the costumes for the 2019 movie 'Little Women,' directed by Greta Gerwig. That film was 'very American,' said Olivier Stockman, the company's managing director. 'Culturally, (it was) an American project, and it was shot in America,' he told CNN. '(But) they still ask us to make the costumes.' '(Americans) haven't lost the position of being the makers or the funder of films,' he said, noting that the majority of companies buying services from Sands Films are American-owned. American films are simply no longer made 'on American soil,' he added. Making movies is expensive and, if filmmakers can spend less money enlisting talented workers outside of America to shoot and edit their movies, that's exactly what they'll do, argued Berry, the film historian. The most effective way to bring productions back to Tinseltown, he said, is not to make it more expensive to produce films elsewhere (which would simply lead to fewer films being made) but to make it cheaper to produce in the area. Marina Hyde, the co-host of 'The Rest is Entertainment,' a podcast focusing on the TV and movie industry, noted recently that labor costs in Hollywood are 'very high.' '(Americans) don't have universal healthcare, they don't have a federal pension… so you have to keep wages high,' she argued on last week's edition of the podcast. Jay Sures, vice chairman of California-based United Talent Agency, also told CNN that high labor costs and 'lack of rebates' in the US mean it's 'infinitely cheaper' to make films overseas. Similarly, the office of California Governor Gavin Newsom said in October that, between 2020 and 2024, the state had lost TV and film production spending because of 'limited tax credit funding' and 'increased competition in other states and countries.' And last week, Newsom called on Trump to work with California to create a $7.5 billion federal tax credit for the movie and TV industry. Currently, tax incentives in the US are exclusively the realm of states and municipalities. Last year, film production in Greater Los Angeles fell 5.6% compared with 2023, as measured by the number of shoot days in the area, according to industry group FilmLA. Only 2020 — upended by the coronavirus pandemic — logged a lower level of production, it noted. However, that drop is only partly explained by 'runaway production,' FilmLA said, with a slow recovery from 2023 labor strikes and a broader industry contraction also playing a part. Ben Charles Edwards, head of production at Goldfinch, the British film production company, thinks more incentives such as tax breaks would help entice filmmakers back to the area. Trump's tariff threat is 'potentially a knee-jerk reaction to an industry over there that isn't the same as it once was,' he told CNN. 'This isn't the answer.' Brian Stelter, Maisie Linford, Anna Stewart and Allison Morrow contributed reporting.
