Mission Impossible Final Reckoning

[Citadel]

 

MISSION IMPOSSIBLE FINAL RECKONING
Film Review by Nikki Bowles & Pierre Maertin

 

There is a lot of last-minute darkened silhouettes moving into their seats, and then the lights dim, the theater grows quiet and the big screen comes alive. Everyone’s attention is riveted to the flickers of lights and motion and music as Tom Cruise, dubbed by some corners of the filmmaking industry as the “ultimate stuntman” and known to most public audiences as Ethan Hunt, makes his final bow in the Mission Impossible role that took his career and fame to the stratosphere starting with Mission Impossible II with John Woo at the helm and the breathtaking action sequences in Spain, in Australia, with sports cars, motorbikes and helicopters.

 

Aesthetically the movie is not pleasing, we have seen Mission Impossible before with high energy and bright colors, daytime photography, the final two movies appear to be immersed in dark lighting, poor color control as the dominant colors are yellow and brownish tones, all extremely bad for a film of this caliber. All of us have seen excellent night cinematography before harking to Miami Vice where at night the colors come through, blue, red, purple, bright white light, yellow, the entire palette of city life, but in Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning, and Final Reckoning the overall look is dark, yellowish, brownish.

 

For a minute I thought, well they aren’t making The Batman The Grunge Edition with Robert Pattison so why are those two installments looking sub-par with what we have been regaled with for more than a decade, a spy action series that rivaled James Bond. But not to worry, in the very last leg of this film, away from the tunnels, we have a daylight action sequence with vintage bright colored biplanes and a sequence straight from the archives of Colt Seavers (Lee Majors) the Unsung Stuntman (The Fall Guy).

 

Best of all, there is the new and hip Thomas Codas, “The Ones We Never Meet” and “We Live and Die in The Shadows”, these super powerful lines are rolled out in multiple scenes with so much reverence as if they are to replace the already baked and flaked Hollywood codas “Hope” and “Family” and the sometimes unspoken or spoken “Together”.

 

The codas in this final MI chapter are clearly in reference to celebrities and actors, famous and adored by millions of supporters and moviegoers, the faceless unknown masses, “The Ones We Never Meet” and of course so many of these fans themselves aspire to stardom yet “they live and die in the shadows” although to be fair the “live and die in the shadows” seems more clearly to be references to publicity, PR, production and stage hands, and post production team members.

 

 

In other words, Tom is sweetly giving himself a pat on the back and giving high-fives to Hollywood in two new codas disguised as some deep, deep, deep philosophical punchlines passed on from the ranks of Buddha to Yoda and coalesced as these secretive fantastic mantras addressing the adversities of life and superspies and superheroes – that are revealed to us, moviegoers in the finale.

 

There is nothing wrong in using a piece of propaganda of this budget and magnitude to say thanks to yourself and colleagues, Mr. Cruise, self-adoration and narcissism is understood as one of the perks of the celebrity job in your industry.

 

 

THE FILM FEELS CHOPPY, SLOW AND SATURATED WITH VOICE-OVER NARRATION AND FLASHBACKS

 

But I am trying to let our audiences down easy, because the biggest problem with this final run at Ethan Hunt is the structure of the entire film’s narrative. It feels choppy going from scene to scene, and the voice narration is beyond heavy-handed, the movie feels like a bad set of scenes that were never properly edited together giving us a lack of smooth flow in the story.  The movie just feels inferior, and the flashbacks do not help at all.  They feel like filler, generously padding the runtime to a little more than two hours and a half.

 

This is the first-time ever that I felt the voice-overs in Mission Impossible.  I don’t recollect there being any in the previous sequels and this time they cheapen the film and make it feel so not like Mission Impossible, they slow it down, and at times the flashbacks and voice-over are like band aid patches over a super bad script.  Mission Impossible The Final Reckoning feels overall several notches below any other MI installment prior to Dead Reckoning.

 

 

WE HAVE SEEN THIS STUFF BEFORE, CRUISE AND PARAMOUNT

 

With the new emergence of consumer-side AI and the constant advertising and pitching of the new technology, the bean counters at Paramount felt by giving us James Bond versus Ultron, they would hit a nerve with audiences and go out on a big bang with fresh, innovative, exciting material for a storyline – another Matrix-sized blockbuster. Sadly, no. The material not only feel recycled, it has been done a million times before in TV series and movies, Man Versus Machine. Even the 1960s Star Trek series had a dance around the Ultimate Computer meant to replace a starship Captain and the system of course goes haywire and puts the entire crew in jeopardy.

 

Yes, in case your memory is slipping there was that thing called The Matrix, big mega hit and then three sequels that gradually tanked into utter boring recycled plot and subplots. Resurrections failed completely in theaters and at the box office, just don’t be sad Keanu, you had a great run!

 

It’s coming at us again in the new Disney movie later on this year, Tron Ares. The computer A.I. leaps out of the box and goes mad into the real world. It’s been done in Superman III, the sequel that killed the originally brilliant Superman franchise. Gosh Hal. Open the Pod Bay Doors Hal (1969 A Space Odyssey).

 

The Terminator series, was it that forgettable with A.I. taking over and almost wiping out humanity. Didn’t the Terminator A.I. spawn a movies series AND a TV series that also died from the excess of exploiting this premise?

 

Apparently, it (The Terminator) travels in time as The Entity to haunt the aging Ethan Hunt. And War Games also treads these very themes and back then it was excusable that a machine with A.I. could so easily overturn all kind of weapons systems interlocks and safeties, a premise so scary if you are not an engineer and do not understand the difference between software-enabled and hard-wired safety systems. Yet once more, Paramount and Tom dish out fear to audiences via an unconvincing setup where The Entity (drum roll) is on a crash course takeover of the world’s nuclear arsenals and just without any real justification as to the rational, it just wants to destroy humanity.

 

 

The premise is beyond childish in this day and age after Y2K and engineers constantly dealing and tweaking consumer side internet malware and hacking issues.  Does anyone for a minute think that military and high-end systems are equally so easy to hack and launch, with a system that has no rationale for committing global annihilation or any rational for exterminating humans except we need to accept it on face value as given, and yet this machine is so advanced it BECOMES SENTIENT and to boot it was created by Russian military technology which we know today is far behind the Western World both in terms of synthetic neural systems and in terms of conventional and nuclear armaments.

 

How would audiences swallow this much crap-quality “huey” Mr. Cruise and Mr. Paramount remains to be seen. Unless The World Zombie Apocalypse disease has already wiped out any measure of advanced and complex human thought processes in moviegoers today.

 

If Mission Impossible is solely targeted at individuals below fifth grade maturity and intellect, who are completely swept up by explosions, stunts and music, they could possibly make a beeline to the movie theaters but they too will be disappointed because this final entrée also leaves much to be desired in terms of pure stunts and actions having been done better in prior sequels from Fallout to MI II.

 

 

Don’t you worry there is a little bit more to endure from our movie review in the Gold Members’ Edition plus a few more stunning and exclusively crafted posters for you to either enjoy or purchase via cart download.

 

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