If the first M:I film, back in 1996, was a teenager — all explosive combustion and complicated layers of deception — the series now culminates as a slightly stooped, elderly man, sadder, more contemplative, and perhaps spending too much time relishing their past exploits. Christopher McQuarrie, the venerable director now responsible for the last four entries in the series, has fashioned an elegiac swan song for Ethan Hunt and the rest of his mish mash of IMF teammates, seemingly closing out the franchise by way of stacking up the stakes — saving the world, ho-hum — while reprising many of the series’ greatest hits.
With few exceptions, the previous M:I films, all of which arguably compromise the best and most consistent full-throttle action series in Hollywood history, were such a joy, in part, because of the way they nimbly set up their massive heist set-pieces, upping the stakes with each turn. There are few things more deeply satisfying to watch than a tight, well-executed plan bucking against insurmountable odds, especially when the plan, even if far-fetched, feels reasonably logical.
In the series’ best moments — the knock-list heist out of Langley in the original; the Rabbit’s Foot grab from M:I 3 (revisited here); the daring, high-altitude caper off the Burj Khalifa in Ghost Protocol — the incredible stunt work was merely the window dressing for the fiendishly clever plan Hunt and co. used to achieve their aim.
Tom Cruise, playing perhaps the signature role of his extensive career — a melding of relentlessly indefatigable character and actor as one — still seems game to do all the harrowing things for our entertainment. Here, he nearly freezes in the Bering sea before drowning himself, fights more than one brutal assailant in nothing but his underwear, and literally jumps from plane to plane high above a mountain range in a final climax — while sprinting at seemingly Olympic speeds all over London. But the years and constant beatings have left Hunt looking more weathered and unkempt than ever before.
More than once, the film alludes to the team’s past exploits, showing snippets of M:I’s past, only heightening this sense of time inexorably passing, even for movie stars. To take but one symbolic note, seeing Cruise back in 1996, sporting a winsome, buzzy undercut, to this film, where his hair has grown out an unkempt, seedy mess, as if just emerging from the 2020 Covid cocoon, is startling and oddly effective. Young Ethan Hunt was firing on all cylinders at once, a whirlwind of motion and intention (“The living manifestation of destiny,” according to one CIA director ); by now, even as well-preserved as Cruise remains, it’s clear Ethan’s life has taken a heavy toll on the character, if not Cruise himself.
There is a story involved of course, following the events of the previous film (Dead Reckoning: Part 1), which had a sentient A.I. program known as “the Entity” working to take over all of the world’s computer systems, including the nuclear arsenals of every country that has them. Now, six months later, the Entity is ever-so-close to achieving its goal of world dominance. It has successfully infiltrated all but a handful of the world’s nuclear passcodes, and stands ready to annihilate nearly all life on the planet in order to set up a new society under its auspices.
The only way to stop it, we are told, is to trace its original source code (which we know from the previous film is on board a sunken Russian submarine, somewhere in the frigid waters of the aforementioned Bering Sea), and, while using both pieces of the Cruceform key everybody spent the last movie chasing to acquire, pull out the drive, bring it to Luther (Ving Rhames) and have him install his self-designed virus that will lock the Entity in place for good.
Thus, Ethan and his pals — including tech wizard Benji (Simon Pegg), smoldering assassin Paris (Pom Klementieff), expert thief and potential love interest Grace (Hayley Atwell), and newly enlisted Degas (Greg Tarzan Davis) — are tasked by the president (a convincing Angela Bassett) as a last-ditch hail mary to make everything right before the Entity gains access to all the remaining countries’ nuclear codes, in approximately 72 hours.
As with many of the previous installments, it’s best not to ask too many questions of the plot mechanics — although even for a series that’s always gone soft and fuzzy on details, this one has enough nonsensical plot holes to make a veritable canyon out of its various untoward machinations — in order to fully enjoy the exhilarating thrill-rush of practical stunt work, in all its complex forms. In one such scene, attempting to retrieve the source code, Ethan is trapped in the sunken sub, as it careens off its rocky perch down into a near fathomless blackness; in another, he’s at the mercy of Gabriel (Esai Morales), his arch-enemy, handcuffed and about to be tortured; in yet another, he’s locked in deadly combat with a rogue Navy operative on-board yet another submarine with only his underwear (and a spinning treadmill) to save him.
All of which builds to a furious, multi-pronged climax, as Ethan takes on Gabriel in bi-plane aerial combat over a remote island; Benji, Paris and Grace work to capture the Entity at the streaming hub on the ground beneath them, even as Benji slowly bleeds out from a bullet wound; Degas works with a helpful married couple (William Donloe and Lucy Tulugarjuk) to dismantle a many megaton nuclear bomb just down the hallway from the others; all while the Entity is finishing up its total infiltration into the world’s nuclear network.
At nearly three hours long, the film is severely bloated, festooned with long passages of Ethan’s former daring dos, and more than a little self-congratulatory, especially for a series that consistently worked to not waste your time with a bunch of superfluous claptrap. The script is also far more ramshackle than the usual M:I yarns, as if the words really don’t matter.
Yet, the thing is, McQuarrie and Cruise still know how to expertly twist the knots in your stomach, ratcheting up the tension with countdowns, and conundrums, and the odds ridiculously stacked against our heroes. Despite myself, I was twisting my fingers up in nervous curlicues. This is certainly one of the flabbiest entries in the series, the weight of its self-importance dimming some of the sparkle from the bravura stunt pieces, but even so, it propels you out of the theater on a serious contact high anyway.
The magic of the series has always been the way Cruise and his team stop at nothing to get us to this point. He might have spared his body a bunch of punishment had he gone the CGI route, but he understands, seemingly better than any other producer in Hollywood, the uncanny thrill of watching someone doing a live stunt with real danger behind it. With the “magic” of computer animation, literally nothing is impossible, and therefore becomes inconsequential; with the impeccable M:I crew, the limits of the human body — even one slowed down by advancing age and battle scars — achieving the seemingly impossible is never short of thrilling.
