MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - THE FINAL RECKONING

Thankfully, once it stops being like those very special episodes of television where we get clips of the best-of moments from previous seasons with some new connecting scenes thrown in, 'The Final Reckoning' slowly finds its feet and begins to run with confidence. We return to the central mystery of 'Dead Reckoning', the quest to find the Russian submarine, the Sevestopol, and retrieve the source code that will stop The Entity. Ethan always works best with the cards stacked against him, and McQuarrie and co-writer Erik Jendresen really don't make it easy for him. He has to navigate multiple superpower countries, The Entity itself and its one-time acolyte Gabriel (Esai Morales, 'Dead Reckoning'), all of whom want the source code before The Entity gains complete control of the planet's nuclear arsenal. It's 'M:I' storytelling at its best - split Ethan up from his team (with Simon Pegg and Ving Rhames now joined by 'Dead Reckoning' returnees Hayley Atwell, Pom Klementieff and Greg Tarzan Davis), send them off to do the nerdy tech-y stuff and throw Ethan right into a dangerous, life-threatening mission.

And this one is a doozy. One of the best aspects of Cruise's performance as Hunt through these films is the momentary look of panic and fear on his face before he's about to do something... well, impossible, and what he's asked to do in the second act centrepiece of 'The Final Reckoning' is one of the most anxiety-inducing, crushingly frightening things he's even been asked to do. After showing us the series at its lowest, 'The Final Reckoning' then shows it at its best, with a perfectly constructed, maniacally paced sequence that had me on the edge of my seat, my head in my hands, practically yelling at the screen. I won't ruin a second of it for you, except to say that, as a piece of action storytelling, I thought it was pretty sublime.

The attempt to retcon the entire series into a succession of planned dominoes continues through the rest of 'The Final Reckoning', but it isn't as frustrating in the latter half as it is in the first, mostly because they stop feeling like Easter eggs and start feeling like parts of the plot. Returning characters are aplenty, even some very obscure ones, but the focus is back on the rising action, and one of my favourite aspects of the structure of 'The Final Reckoning' is how the rise in action brings a rise in tension. Seeing these familiar faces adds to the sense that this impending threat is the real deal, not some clandestine plot occurring in the shadows but one where every person on the planet is watching, the move towards catastrophe almost inevitable. McQuarrie doesn't rush this (which accounts for the film's nearly three-hour run time), and while the results are often very goofy and heavy-handed, they're underpinned by a palpable sense of threat and of time running out. It's not as exquisite as the final act of 'Fallout' (I mean, few things in film are), but you still have the satisfaction of seeing all the pieces click into place.

It also helps that the final signature stunt is absolutely insane. The motorcycle jump in 'Dead Reckoning' was more impressive than it was spectacular, but the stunt in 'The Final Reckoning' is a magnificent piece of stunt work and action filmmaking. Each moment you think it can't get more complex or dangerous, it finds a way to surpass your expectations. McQuarrie has always been more interested in the spectacle of Cruise's stunts rather than, say, the anxiety-inducing immediacy of the Burj Khalifa sequence in 'Ghost Protocol' (2011), but in a way, he shoots these stunts like a great film musical - show as much as you can to make it clear this is real and this actor is really doing this. And, as always, there's little question that Cruise is now a master at hanging off things in mid-air and somehow acting at the same time.

If the 'Mission: Impossible' series has become its worst enemy by setting such high expectations for itself, then 'The Final Reckoning' makes those expectations practically impossible to match. There's a strange imbalance to this film, seemingly trying to be the grand wrap-up of the greatest action franchise of all, while not actually wrapping anything up. While I did genuinely love the film and found it one of the most nail-biting entries in the franchise, I also found it lacking in personality. Each film feels like it has its own flavour, whether it be the grandeur of 'Fallout', the sophistication of 'Rogue Nation', the ferocity of the third film, the melodrama of 'Dead Reckoning' or even the weird uncomfortable horniness of 'M:I-2'. There is so much going on in 'The Final Reckoning', so much being packed in and so much that it feels the need to solve, that it never finds its own flavour. You simply feel that you're being thrown from one moment to the next, and while in the second and third acts, those moments are fabulous, they don't feel entirely cohesive.

It should be said though that, when you compare a new 'Mission: Impossible' film to anything, you're comparing them to other 'Mission: Impossible' films. In that case, of course parts of 'The Final Reckoning' are going to feel disappointing. When compared to other action films though, even with its terrible first act, 'The Final Reckoning' is still enormously impressive. The secret to Cruise and McQuarrie's success with these films is understanding the importance of action as rhythm, as music, as a building crescendo. We aren't here for nuance, we're here for spectacle, but that spectacle always has to feel earned, considered and grounded. That's why it matters that we're seeing Tom Cruise do all these stunts himself. Ethan's task is to do the impossible, but we have to believe that there's a sliver of the possible about it, and that the thrill for us is seeing how close he will come to failure and how much it will cost him (and us) if he does. Everything in the filmmaking needs to serve delivering on that promise, and this means taking the goofy-as-hell (like McQuarrie's insane tendency to have multiple characters deliver exposition all together in broken sentences) with the sublime (Tom Cruise hanging off an effing plane).

But is this the end? Who knows. Despite the title and despite the clip show first act and endless tie-together Easter eggs, this doesn't feel like an ending, more the sense of an ending. It's almost as if the film is hedging its bets in both directions. The film would have been all the better for deciding one way or the other. Either send Ethan off in a blaze of glory or just let this be another impossible mission for him to complete. The final moments of the film lean me towards the tired cliché of quoting T.S. Eliot and saying the film ends, not with a bang, but with a whimper, but that isn't to say that there aren't plenty of bangs along the way. If 'The Final Reckoning' is guilty of anything, it's just trying to do too much with what it has, when it could have done less and been all the better for it.

Even still, it's a 'Mission: Impossible' film, and even at its worst (and I don't think 'The Final Reckoning' is this series at its worst), there's just nothing else like it.