There’s no denying Mission: Impossible – Final Reckoning is a very good action movie. It suffers from a slow beginning, some silly dialogue, and an absurdly-long runtime, but the stunts are incredible (it’s one of the most expensive films ever made, so they better be) and one montage of Tom Cruise doing the Tom Cruise thing at the bottom of the ocean had me on the actual edge of my seat. (I won’t spoil it.) The grand finale is nothing less than a paean to human endurance.
But the really interesting thing about the movie is the way it captures the zeitgeist of a world in flux. I wasn’t expecting the last film of a rip-roaring spy franchise to explore the deep-seated fears of a technological revolution we can’t stop; yet it does, and very effectively. Academy Award-winning writer and director Christopher McQuarrie deserves credit for giving us a plot ripped straight from the headlines—and, as it turns out, the scriptures.
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