One can view the Mission Impossible film series as a recurring effort to entertain audiences while making the least amount of logical sense possible—and of all eight entries, perhaps none stretches the gap as far as The Final Reckoning. Things start out uncertainly: the movie’s first half is strangely devoid of action, its only seeming purpose to add, via never-ending exposition, myriad layers of incoherence and inconsistency to the exciting things that are about to happen in the second half. Why, exactly, does The Entity want to destroy the world and hide in a South African bunker? Why would the IMF risk allowing it into the bunker, when they know that, otherwise, it would never carry out its nuclear threats? Why does Gabriel flee the bunker when Ethan has the MacGuffin he desperately wants—and why does Ethan not simply give it to Gabriel in midair, considering that he originally wanted Gabriel to have it? Why are they trying to kill each other on planes when they supposedly want the same outcome, and the destruction of either’s MacGuffin would mean catastrophic defeat for both?
But none of this matters. Not even the inexplicable first part of the film—an hour of my life sunken like the Sebastopol submarine—matters. Thanks to the reliably awesome action centerpieces provided (eventually) by Tom Cruise and company, it’ll remain a guilty pleasure for years to come.
–Jim Andersen