Well, as much as I really enjoyed the seventh Mission Impossible with Tom Cruise (MI: Dead Reckoning) when I streamed it on Paramount Plus this past May, and said I'd be back soon with a review of Final Reckoning (which was Part 2 of Dead Reckoning, which was opening soon the theaters which I intended to see) ... well, the beaches on Cape Cod were just too tempting.
But I did manage to see MI: Final Reckoning tonight on Paramount Plus, where it started streaming yesterday, and I thought it was great, for all kinds of reasons. Here, without spoilers, are some of them:
- As the eighth and (at this point, at least) the final Tom Cruise MI, Final Reckoning did a fine job of bringing into play elements from the previous seven movies. I guess my favorite was bringing back the Phelps story, which made this eight-movie arc even more a direct descendant of Mission Impossible on television, where of course the story was born.
- I said in my review of Dead Reckoning that the enemy being AI made Ethan Hunt more modern than Bond (at least so far). In every Bond movie, an evil human being has been the prime enemy. There were evil humans to be sure in Dead Reckoning and Final Reckoning, but the worst of the villains indubitably is an AI. Thus not only did Final Reckoning delve into Terminator territory, you can throw in Tron, and while we're at it, War Games and lots of other literally bloodless arch-villians as well.
- To be clear, as I've been saying in lots of places these days, I'm not concerned about AI replacing us, destroying us, or anything that's been a favorite of fiction at least since Karel Čapek's R.U.R more than a century ago. And I like those fictions a lot -- but they're fictions. And as far as fiction about AI goes, I prefer Asimov's robots/androids, who sometimes do us harm, but also do us a lot of good.
- Final Reckoning has some powerful star power. Tom Cruise's Ethan Hall is a truly memorable character, because he's well written and as well as well acted. Same for the MI team, both in Final Reckoning and the previous MI movies. And I have to say Angela Bassett as US President was superb, as well all as all the other heroes and villains that play out a taut story in which millions if not billions of lives are at stake. (It was also great to see Tramell Tillman -- Severance! -- in charge of a crucial vessel at sea.)
- And the action scenes are first rate in every natural environment on Planet Earth, that is, land, sea, and air. In those scenes, Hunt is every bit as impressive as Bond.
- I'll just also say that in the midst of all this action, Final Reckoning has a deep and impressive moral core.
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