For almost three decades, Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt has made the impossible possible. Ever since he dangled from a wire in a high security vault to retrieve a floppy disk in 1996's Brian De Palma-directed Mission: Impossible, Cruise has bent action cinema to his own will. And so it goes for Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, a film that wraps up this spy franchise in typically spectacular style, showing that Hunt is nigh-on indestructible on land, sea or air.
With this the eighth Mission: Impossible movie, this franchise has, curiously, followed the Harry Potter pattern. Same number of films. A director – in this case Christopher McQuarrie – who has helmed the final four movies. And a last chapter that, in fact, is the second film of a two-part story. Except that here, Dead Reckoning – Part Two, as it was originally called, is now The Final Reckoning, emphasising that this really is it for Ethan Hunt and his fellow IMF spies.
