MISSION STATEMENT

 

MOVIE
Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning
Director Christopher McQuarrie
Review Ray Chan

You don’t really need to have seen the last 30 years’ worth of Mission Impossible movies featuring Tom Cruise to comprehend this current offering: the eighth, and purportedly, last of the series.
    And, indeed, it’s almost as impossible as the flick’s name to believe that the toothy thespian made his first appearance for  the Impossible Mission Force (IMF) ─ a special-agent unit loyal to no-one but weirdly always at the beck and call of the USA ─ back in 1996. My daughter, now the mother of four kids, was born not long before then, and she’s practically grown up with each instalment.
    Annoyingly for many of us dad-bodied denizens, Tom has not let age weary him. He looks great for 62, understandably a bit fuller in the face, but still retaining an Adonis-esque appearance.
    As Ethan Hunt, the beleaguered spy’s modus operandi seems to be shooting, sprinting and skydiving in attempts to rescue the world, often in adventures with espionage plots so byzantine and convoluted that  they’re really not worth wasting time pondering over.
    What makes viewers come back to these spectacles is the desire to watch this actor’s adrenaline-junkie pursuit of action-cinema realism, in which he shuns stand-ins and prefers performing the acrobatics and athletics himself.
    At a time when CGI-laden adaptations and mega-blockbusters have dulled even the most extraordinary superhuman feats on screen, Tom's fanatic insistence on performing the most extravagant stunts adds just that bit more spice the films, daring audiences to look away as real blood, flesh and bones are risked for their entertainment. 
    And so, don’t expect any surprises from Final Reckoning. The complex storyline is as inscrutable  as they come, involving a malevolent and pseudo-sentient AI program, while pulling in elements from previous chapters in what seems to be an effort to neatly tie up any loose threads hanging around.
    But as mentioned before, none of it matters. All you need to know is that Hunt and his crew work to overcome insurmountable odds (more than once) to grab an object, fire an object, cut the wires to an object, or shove an object into another object at exactly the right moment.
    It's visual storytelling, and it's the same song the franchise has been singing since our hero was rock climbing or fighting on tops of trains which fell over edges in the first film. You don't have to understand it to get it. 
    The showstoppers are impressive: one involves Hunt navigating freezing waters to infiltrate a sunken Russian submarine (in a sequence that really takes far too long), and the other a well-publicised duel in which the agent gets thrown around like a ragdoll on a biplane.
    And if you want a reason for watching this movie, then that’s the clincher. If this is indeed Tom's swansong, it's the last chance to be enthralled by his antics on the big screen.
    It’s not too much a spoiler to say that Hunt survives the ordeals. So is Final Reckoning truly final? Who can say?
    Hunt has been almost hilariously  described by his peers as "the living manifestation of destiny", but not even his Optimus Prime platitudes about fate and determination can eradicate villainy, which is bound to rear its head again.
    Who will the President call next time? Perhaps it’s something to contemplate while having a roast dinner.

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