‘MI:8’: Where the Villain Is AI, and the Real Threat Is Exposition
The latest "Mission: Impossible" submerges breathtaking action and suspense 20,000 leagues beneath a sea of mission planning.
Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible movies have earned their bread for decades, and garnered a die-hard following who will be sorry to see the star’s Ethan Hunt plunge into his purported last death-defying stunts in Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning.
Based on the classic TV series created by Bruce Geller, the films, helmed by a succession of top-shelf directors, haven’t all been great (we’re looking at you, M:I-2), but the last few, directed by Christopher McQuarrie (Rogue Nation, Fallout, Dead Reckoning), have been a hyper-kinetic gas, steadily building on series continuity while delivering engaging standalone adventures.
The McQuarrie movies, and Cruise, have all gone hard, tossing the indefatigable actor-producer off buildings and cliffs, out of planes and helicopters, and off the back of an aircraft carrier in this eighth installment, all for the sake of thrilling the moviegoing audience.
No movie star alive, it seems, is more epically committed to thrilling the moviegoing public, and keeping his industry alive, than Cruise. After the whopping post-pandemic success of Top Gun: Maverick, no less than Steven Spielberg told Cruise, according to Variety, “You saved Hollywood’s ass,” adding, “Top Gun: Maverick might’ve saved the entire theatrical industry.”
That’s the glaring subtext for this latest mission. Tom’s here to save movies again, from a foe potentially deadlier to the industry than a human virus — AI. That sinister sentient artificial intelligence known as The Entity, introduced in Dead Reckoning is still loose and menacing the world. Ethan’s mission, and he chooses to accept it, is to shut it down.
The very nature of truth in society is at stake, as the Entity extends its virtual tendrils into social and broadcast media, distorting facts, misinforming the public, and destabilizing trust in every media news source. Parasitic AI represents a scarily accurate incarnation of a post-truth villain run amok.
Tom’s the one doing the running, of course. What would a Tom Cruise action movie be without hectic sprints across a wide-angle expanse of landscape or skyline? He, or Ethan, is also doing more than the usual share of prepping and gaming out plans, briefing and debriefing, and being briefed on objectives, obstacles, assets, and losses.
To a degree that nears self-parody, the film — written by McQuarrie and Erik Jendresen — often feels like sitting through one of the detailed briefings that must go into devising the franchise’s extravagant stunts.
Yes, elaborate information dumps, reeled off via recordings or in all-hands-on-deck confabs, are as much a signature of Mission: Impossible as the incredibly advanced mask technology. Hunt’s missions require finesse, not just brute force, and thus, require planning, which also clues the audience in on the exact ways the mission could go wrong, adding to the suspense.
What isn’t suspenseful is sitting in these meetings. I can imagine Daniel Craig’s James Bond jumping up, grabbing his pistol, and sneering, “Can we just get on with it?” (Maybe that’s how the Bond movie meetings went, too.)
Here, it’s Hunt’s Dead Reckoning foe-turned-team member, Paris (Guardians of the Galaxy‘s Pom Klementieff), serving that gung-ho energy, always ready to end the meeting so she can get back to kicking ass. Klementieff, solidifying her screen presence as an action heroine, is intense, as Paris pursues revenge against the Entity’s literal right-hand man, and her former boss, Gabriel (an impeccably icy Esai Morales).
Too bad the filmmakers don’t give her character anything else to care about, although more than once, Paris proves loyal to the IMF team, repped again by Luther (Ving Rhames), Benji (Simon Pegg), and Dead Reckoning recruit Grace (Hayley Atwell).
The franchise also adds new faces in cameos, including Hannah Waddingham as a Navy admiral, Nick Offerman as an Army general, and Severance breakout Tramell Tillman as a suave submarine captain. Hunt gets up to some of his most daring Final Reckoning exploits deep under the Bering Sea — when he isn’t fighting for his life balanced on the wings of a soaring aerobatic airplane.
McQuarrie and crew also craft brutally tense scenes of hand-to-hand combat, cross-cutting brilliantly in one sequence between Ethan scrapping in his boxer briefs, and Paris and company battling through a barrage of henchmen elsewhere.
But the underwater and aerial sequences blow everything else out of the water, with fantastic staging, camerawork, and such tremendous undersea sound design that James Cameron will be spitting out his gold-dusted popcorn.
Of the two sequences, one ends in the most flawlessly-timed visual joke I’ve seen in a movie all year. It’s hilarious. The other, unfortunately, ends in a cheat, with Ethan Hunt reaching what must be the absolute limit of what he is physically capable of before the film just cuts ahead to moments after he’s been saved. Exactly as planned, we must suppose, in one of those endless meetings.
Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning (★★★☆☆) is rated PG-13, and is playing in theaters nationwide. Visit www.fandango.com.
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