Calculate how old you were when you watched the first Mission: Impossible film. For nearly 30 years, Tom Cruise has been running, hanging off planes, jumping off trains, giving chase on bikes, scaling cliffs, jumping off bikes after jumping off cliffs… And Ethan Hunt is back, one last time (salt, salt), doing everything, everywhere, all at once, this time in tiny black briefs, over three hours of the movie’s run-time. (It’s long, but you won’t hear me complaining.)
ICYMI for the last 29 years, a little refresher going back to the events of 1996 tries to underscore the “final” in the title—dead/gone love interests and sidekicks, the big fireworks, well-conditioned hair, et al—but in my head I’m keeping things open-ended.
Here’s what stuck from my second-day-first-show viewing of the film. (Spoilers ahead, so read on only if you choose to accept.)
Word!
The Entity. The Anti-God. The Doomsday Vault. Rabbit’s Foot. Lord of Lies. Incorruptible Arc of Human History. Primordial Digital Ooze. Tell Me I Win! All real phrases that could have been coined by a sci-fi-obsessed middle-schooler. It is placeholder text that’s so bad they decided it was good.
Heights!
We’ve gone from toy-like yellow car in Dead Reckoning to toy-like yellow plane in The Final Reckoning. Gripping scene, really—highlight even—if only a to-kill-for-and-to-die-for gadget called the Poison Pill that looks like an electric razor wasn’t dangling off the villain’s neck like an Olympic medal off Simone Biles’s. Heard of pockets, anyone? Also, don’t appreciate a death as easy-peasy as a tomato on my mom’s cutting board.
Milchik!
Tramell Tillman, Hannah Waddingham, Holt McCallany… The who’s-who of prestige TV came to play in this film. Some more of the bear-poking Commander Bledsoe in MI9 (we won’t be surprised if it happens) would be great thanks.
Sweet!
The Entity is everywhere. Country after country succumbs to the digital infestation, as, offline, cult-y dead-eyed followers spout its Thanos-y dogma. The Entity can launch nuclear missiles and bring on World War III. But The Entity, when the film finally gives it physical form, looks like a slice of Bombay halwa.
Ooh la la!
Pom Klementieff—Mantis from Guardians of the Galaxy—who plays evil sidekick turned French Yoda good assassin here, keeps dropping pithy dialogue like a squirrel dropping acorns: “It will change you”, “Who will live and who will die?”, “His time will come”… Trés entertaining.
Oh Tom!
Whether stuck in a chamber full of lolling underwater missiles like a mouse amidst bowling pins or throwing wisecracks while trying to dodge a scary Russian sub that’s waiting around like the XL shark from The Meg (“I’ll get off at the corner”), or getting into tight and tighter spaces, there is no one but Tom for the job. “Main chahta hoon tum mujhpe bharosa karo, ek akhri bar,” you said on the video I watched on Instagram. Always, Tom, always.
