Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – THE FINAL RECKONING
If Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning really is as final as its title implies, I can perhaps forgive the film for including so very many flashback images from the franchise's previous seven installments, including images that are regurgitated two or three times over. (Fans will likely never tire of that iconic shot from Brian De Palma's first M:I in which Ethan Hunt, baby-faced in 1996, dangled by thin wires in that gleaming-white vault.) But if this is indeed the series' end – I mean, y'know … we'll see … – I'm still not sure I can forgive director/co-writer Christopher McQuarrie's latest for being so dully protracted and humorless, or for the decision to transform super-operative Hunt, and by extension Tom Cruise, into a veritable messiah.
Again and again over the course of Final Reckoning's redundant two hours and 50 minutes, we're reminded that Cruise's Impossible Missions Force agent is the only human being able to prevent worldwide cataclysm at the hands of sinister AI. We're also reminded that he alone is responsible for getting us into this global pickle in the first place. Consequently, with our hero both the cause and the solution, McQuarrie's movie almost has no choice but to make it All About Ethan, no matter the plethora of allies and antagonists hustling about on the sidelines. And Cruise seems more than happy – eager, even – to be the showcased attraction, whether the 62-year-old is being complimented for his latest coif or wrestling a goon while only wearing skin-tight gym shorts. As the PR has made abundantly clear, many of this action-thriller franchise's most dangerous stunts have been performed by Tom himself; he loves this series so much he's willing to die for our entertainment. So he's kinda like Jesus Christ, only with less nobility of purpose, though perhaps an equivalent God complex.
As much fun as it is to routinely ding Tom Cruise, it's also fruitless, because the things I don't like about the guy on-screen – his pushy earnestness, his excessive vanity, his over-commitment to even throwaway moments – are seemingly what the mass audience adores him for. And what sucks about getting on the star's case for the new M:I is that, over its last four entries, Ethan Hunt is a role I generally like Cruise in. Until now, in the part, the man has been allowed to lean heavily into his gifts for speedy dialogue and comedy, he's been physically witty, he's appeared comfortable sharing the screen with a slew of performance equals and betters … . All reasons why Jerry Maguire, also from '96, might forever remain the finest outlet for Cruise's talents and presence. Yet we get precious little of the old Ethan Hunt here – and by “old,” I mean two years old, as its headliner was at the top of his game in 2023's Dead Reckoning Part One. That McQuarrie's and co-screenwriter Erik Jendresen's theoretical series finale is lengthier and more downbeat than its predecessors isn't, in itself, a deal-breaker; Avengers: Endgame did pretty well for itself with a three-hour run time and fewer gags. But Final Reckoning never stops reiterating that this is Serious Stuff for both Hunt and his portrayer, and the exhausting sameness of it all keeps grinding the movie to a halt.
Early in the film, there's a scene in which Hunt and his IMF bestie Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg) free the French assassin Paris (Pom Klementieff) from incarceration at the hands of CIA agent Theo Degas (Greg Tarzan Davis). Though other patrons might wind up feeling cheated, I'm happy to report that this sequence is the only one to feature those de rigueur lifelike masks that momentarily turn every M:I into a high-tech episode of Scooby-Doo. I'm less happy to report that the standoff between Paris and Theo, with Hunt in the middle playing mediator, goes on for so long, is so lousy with “intense” back-and-forth reaction shots in which no one's expressions change, that members of my audience began to inappropriately giggle. This wasn't the first Final Reckoning scene to severely outlast its welcome. That would've been the pre-credits intro in which Hunt, with Cruise delivering no end of conflicted facial contortions, received his new “invited” assignment (on a VHS tape!) from Angela Bassett's off-screen President Erika Stone – a sequence accompanied by about three minutes' worth of flashback footage. But that foiled-incarceration bit was the first to suggest the weird absence of an editor … and it turned out not to be the last.
Some of McQuarrie's and Jendresen's exchanges simply keep pounding out the same information with so little variance that I was ready to cry for mercy. This is especially true in Bassett's scenes with Nick Offerman, Holt McCallany, Janet McTeer, Mark Gatiss, and Charles Parnell – collectively the most overqualified acting ensemble ever to utter tired exposition in a White House situation room. Their duties here require them, time and again, to argue over the president's recruitment of Hunt and the nefariousness of the seemingly sentient AI known as the Entity, and even their ethical crisis over Stone potentially nuking American soil is grimly repetitive. (It's also a rip-off of Sidney Lumet's stunning 1964 thriller Fail-Safe, which, unlike Final Reckoning, had the guts to say which U.S. territory was gonna get hit with the blast; this film's coyness on that front brought back unwanted memories of the unnamed enemy in Top Gun: Maverick.) Yet there's barely a plot point in this latest M:I that isn't repeated beyond measure, an issue that might've been remedied with some judicious editing. I'm thinking about nearly everything we're told regarding the pickpocket skills of Hayley Atwell's Grace and the timing necessary to best the Entity for good, as well as the hammy mania of Esai Morales' villainous Gabriel, who keeps yakking about how, with the Entity under his control, he'll soon be the ruler of all humankind. We kinda got that with Gabriel's first half-dozen reminders, but the seventh time, he seemed to really mean it.
Yet the segments most in need of trimming were Hunt's big action set pieces, and I'm pretty convinced the bloat was for an understandable, if detrimental, reason: McQuarrie and Cruise didn't want to lose a single frame of the star stunting his ass off. Despite a few moments of moderate tension and peril, there's about twice as much of Hunt rambling around the remains of the fallen Dead Reckoning submarine as necessary, and we certainly didn't need quite so many reminders about how no human being on earth could possibly pull off the planned feat. (What might've been a knuckle-tightening 10 minutes seems to go on for a good 20 and change.) Yet the film's stuntwork coup de grâce, with Hunt dangling from not one but two planes, is somehow just as tiresome, with long minutes devoted to watching Cruise's cheeks flap in the wind while he attempts to kick his legs over the wings and into the cockpits. I do love how willing Cruise is to look ridiculous for our enjoyment, and it was endearing when the powerful gusts matted down his hair into a bowl cut so that Hunt resembled Moe from the Three Stooges. The sequence itself, though, lasts an eternity, and while it does lead to a delightfully nasty punchline, this well-executed vignette is otherwise an intensely risky yawn.
Yawning, sadly, was my gut-level response to most of Final Reckoning, despite a number of performers coming off particularly well. Ving Rhames, of course, is a national treasure, and his natural authority and deep-voiced wit are put to spectacular use when his Luther Stickell is forced to accept a legitimately impossible mission. (I still can't tell, however, if it's meant to be a joke that Luther gets a countdown clock of three minutes to perform his heroic task, two-and-a-half minutes of which are gobbled up by a teary Ethan insisting on a heart-to-heart.) But McQuarrie and Jendresen, who clearly know their way around a juicy monologue, also provide occasionally excellent material for Shea Whigham and Henry Czerny, and Severance's Tramell Tillman is a fantastic series addition as another sub's commanding officer. He's one of few here who scores laughs solely through inventive line deliveries and deadpan pauses, and Tillman even makes his character's overused acknowledgment of Hunt as “Mister” increasingly insulting and, in its way, almost imperceptibly biting.
Props, too, for the inspired return and first-rate performance of Rolf Saxon. I won't spoil who he is – or rather, in the series' canon, who he was. But his appearance is one of the few truly ticklish elements on display in this installment whose franchise, until this past weekend, had spent the better part of 15 years being awfully ticklish. Despite my complaint about their over-abundance, it's disheartening to admit that the most genuine fun I had at Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning came from those flashback reminders of the fun I previously had: the Cruise stunts that were thrilling without appearing quite so self-congratulatory; the sexually charged charisma exuded by Michelle Monaghan, Rebecca Ferguson, and Vanessa Kirby; the scary-as-eff Philip Seymour Hoffman, the finest Bond villain who never appeared in a Bond movie. Occasional bummers aside over its 29-year run, the M:I franchise has proven completely deserving of a few visualized strolls through Memory Lane. Should another entry transpire if and when Cruise wants a ninth one, though, it's hard to say what about this eighth will prove worthy of making the greatest-hits package.
LILO & STITCH
Much as I'd like to offer some perspective on whether Disney's new live-action (and it's largely true this time!) remake of one of the studio's classic animated features is a worthy or worthless counterpart, I honesty can't. Unlike the hand-drawn or computer-animated takes on Snow White, Beauty & the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King, The Little Mermaid, et cetera et cetera and so forth, I haven't seen Disney's original Lilo & Stitch innumerable times. I saw it exactly once, back when it debuted in 2002, and having not particularly cared for it, I never thought to return to it. Could that perhaps be why I had such a good time at director Dean Fleischer Camp's 2025 rendition – because Disney's latest technological “upgrade” didn't sully any of my cherished cinematic memories? Quite possibly, as I'll be the first to admit that Camp's movie isn't any kind of gem. For my time and money, it's more in line with, say, Lyle Lyle Crocodile and Harold & the Purple Crayon: perfectly decent family-friendly entertainment with a few solid gags and a dash of invention. Given Disney's “live-action” track record of recent years, though, that's it's own kind of upgrade, and what the film is missing in magic is more than made up for in off-the-charts cute.
From what I understand based on a trusted source – that being my favorite 10-year-old who graciously agreed to join me for a screening – and despite the absence of the original's antagonist Gantu whom I don't recall, this Lilo & Stitch faithfully follows the track of the previous Lilo & Stitch, sometimes to the point of being a shot-for-shot and line-for-line re-creation. Lilo (Maia Kealoha) is again a precocious yet lonely Hawaiian six-year-old who, in the wake of their parents' death, is being raised by her overwhelmed older sister Nani (Sydney Elizebeth Agudong). Stitch – voiced, as in the original, by Chris Sanders – is again a blue, koala-like alien genetically engineered for wanton mischief who finds himself on Earth. Lilo and Stitch bond amidst all sorts of slapstick shenanigans. Outer-space beings (Zach Galifianakis and Billy Magnussen) want to forcibly take Stitch back to his home planet. An earthling CIA agent (Courtney B. Vance) wants to find, capture, and study the interstellar visitor. A kindly social worker (Tia Carrere) gets involved. There's non-violent mayhem. There's makeshift-family sentiment. There are lots of Elvis songs. Based on my sole L&S viewing from 23 years ago, I remembered almost none of this. Potentially because of that, the movie was a total smile.
In truth, though, not all of it worked for me. While his comedic readings as the CGI Dr. Jumba Jookiba were energetically sardonic, Galifianakis seemed bizarrely sedate in human form, maybe because the endearing, freewheeling goofiness we generally associate with the actor was instead being provided by Magnussen. Vance doesn't appear to have any idea why he's there – and because the plans and motives of his agent Cobra Bubbles are so vague, neither do we. And considering how much gorgeous quiet and melancholy he brought to his Marcel the Shell with Shoes On from 2022, I was frankly surprised that his Lilo & Stitch was so consistently manic. You'd expect that from the Stitch scenes as he upends a fancy party and shatters glass and farts in the punch bowl. But even the introductory sequences on Oahu felt like they were being timed with a stopwatch to prevent the young-'uns from getting bored, and it wouldn't have killed the film, or its pre-teen demographic, to occasionally slow down for Stitch to revere his surroundings with the same fervor he eventually bestows on Lilo. Aliens in movies crash-land on Earth all the time, but rarely in a geographic spot so heart-stoppingly beautiful.
Still, Sanders' Tasmanian Devil shrieks and gobbledygook vocalizations are comic gold, offering a welcome dose of E.T. when Stitch finds himself in the rare contemplative mood, and although the effects can't match the speed of 2002's hand-drawn animation, the CGI take is satisfyingly kinetic. Yet if this admirable Lilo & Stitch belongs to anything or anyone, it's Agudong and Kealoha. An adult friend of mine who, as a parent, knows the original way better than I do said she adored the film principally because it “humanized the humans,” and Agudong is marvelously empathetic and touching as Nani. You absolutely buy her anxiety, determination, and reservoirs of love, and that's primarily because her young co-star Kealoha is – and I may be understating here – the most freaking adorable child performer I've seen in decades. Kealoha has an early scene in which Lilo tries to exaggerate and lie her way through the social worker's visit, and the novice actor's naturalism and unimpeachable comic timing had me laughing out loud well before she focused her talents on Stitch, when her gifts bordered on the preternaturally genius. I don't know how a director gets a performer so young to so fully pull off the “you're speaking to a creature who isn't there” requirement of CGI entertainment. But Fleischer did it, and Lilo & Stitch has two principal reasons for deserving its Memorial Day weekend record-setting haul of $183-million domestic. They're Lilo and Stitch.
THE LAST RODEO
Is director/co-writer Jon Avnet's The Last Rodeo the first pro-faith drama in history in which the mildly agnostic lead character makes his long-awaited conversion to Christianity off-camera? Up until the finale, our hero with the perfectly Western name of Joe Wainright (co-writer Neal McDonough) has had a checkered relationship with God, largely blaming Him for his personal and financial struggles as a champion bull rider, and especially blaming him for the brain tumor that might take the life of his grandson Billy (Daylon Swearingen). But just as Joe hops on his bronc for the climactic eight-second ride with a million-dollar cash prize – enough money, and then some, for the surgery required to save his grandson's life – he pulls out his necklace and shows trainer/bestie Charlie Williams (Mykelti Williams) that it now has a miniature crucifix attached. It's a touching moment, one the audience has been anticipating. But did anyone else notice that it came straight from the clear-blue sky, as we were deprived of the scene that should've landed before it – the one in which Joe finally makes peace with his grievances and doubts and agrees to, as the song goes, let Jesus take the wheel?
This is Avnet's film in a nutshell: a movie that knows what it wants to accomplish but has a helluva time demonstrating legitimate, or even comprehensible, ways to get there. Were this merely a prototypically “inspirational,” sports-adjacent heart-tugger about a former champ's redemption, it would be weak enough: profoundly unsurprising, generically tiresome, blandly staged, and indifferently acted in several major roles. (Also in minor ones – I'm praying that those cast as professional bull riders are indeed professional bull riders, as they'll clearly never make it as actors.) But in adding pro-faith leanings into the mix, The Last Rodeo becomes downright confusing, given that barring a few mentions of spiritual trust and a mass prayer, you'd barely know the release was pro-faith had it not ended with the requisite climax from its Angel Studios distributor: a plea, from McDonough himself, that patrons direct their phones to the screen and scan the QR code to “pay it forward” to viewers without sufficient means to purchase their own tickets. The teenage Swearingen acquits himself ably, Sarah Jones is excellent as Joe's bitter daughter, and, as usual, Christopher McDonald proves impervious to lackluster material. But also as usual, this latest Angel offering forces you to leave the auditorium on a note of pure salesmanship – though what they're selling this time is strangely hard to gauge.
FRIENDSHIP
You can imagine loads of other middle-aged comic talents in the role of Craig Waterman, the neighbor from Hell in writer/director Andrew DeYoung's Friendship: Will Ferrell, Steve Carrell, John C. Reilly, Seth Rogen, Zach Galifianakis … even Paul Rudd, who plays the sane(r) member of the movie's pair of warring anti-pals. I'd argue, though, that with anyone else in the part, the film would've merely been high-concept entertainment. Tim Robinson makes it cringey art.
For three seasons (and hopefully counting), Robinson's Netflix sketch-comedy series I Think You Should Leave has been a bastion of hilarity in an increasingly unfunny world. Not all of its segments find Robinson playing the most staggeringly clueless white man who ever graced God's green earth. A significant percentage of them do, however, and what has resulted has been borderline-indescribable. It's not just that Robinson's collection of hapless, agitated loners are constitutionally unaware of social niceties and unable to conform to them. It's that they hate everyone – they essentially hate you – for demanding that they follow rules they don't understand and (apparently) weren't taught, and that they subsequently respond to signals that other human beings are instinctively cognizant of. Tim Robinson characters simply don't get it, and they're irrationally angry at anyone who can't make sense of that. That's the quality that makes these figures, beyond being riotous, also deeply frightening. Because “Tim Robinson” isn't behaving in any way that suggests normalcy, his reactions to perceived offenses, or even simple misjudgment, can be terrifyingly abnormal. I love I Think You Should Leave like nobody's business, and am almost always grateful that its vignettes tend to run five minutes at best. Too much of that toxic energy feels unsafe.
Well, we get roughly 95 minutes of that comic toxicity in Friendship, and to the movie's credit, I very much felt unsafe. DeYoung's feature-length debut is basically an extended ITYSL sketch in which Robinson's suburban loser nonpareil finally lands a best bro in Rudd's local weatherman Austin Carmichael, a semi-doltish charmer who drops Craig as a pal almost as quickly as he recruits him. What happens before, during, and after their brief slice of platonic heaven is probably best left unspoiled, though I will tease that the goings-on include, and are surely not limited to: a banana-yellow sports car; a neighborhood street outfitted with speed bumps; potentially poisonous mushrooms; sewage tunnels under City Hall; a spotless glass door; a surprisingly convincing toupée; “the new Marvel”; and a Chekhovian gun. None of these inclusions, though, are quite as cringe-comedy nightmarish as the misguided passion with which Craig, during a support-group meeting, grabs the leg of his wife Tami (Kate Mara) right after she's shared her fear of her in-remission cancer coming back. As Craig insists: “It's not coming back.”
It's difficult to explain what makes this line, Robinson's very first one in the movie, so simultaneously hysterical and paralyzingly upsetting. But the performer remains on a knife's edge of supportive, oblivious, inappropriate, and potentially deranged through the entirely of DeYoung's film, and if Friendship becomes at all tedious – and, unfortunately, it does a bit – it's only because of the narrative repetition, as Chekhov's gun really can't go off until we're closer to the finale. As extended sketches go, however, this thing is sublime, with Rudd exceptional as a high roller who might be every bit the (closeted) dork that Craig is, Mara and the gifted Jack Dylan Grazer as a mother and son whose closeness raises the audience's eyebrows as well as Craig's, Billy Bryk as an unhelpful cell-phone salesman, Conner O'Malley as an epically abrasive party guest, and Josh Segarra as a dreamy fireman landlord. The film is uproarious, unsettling, and oddly moving. I think you should go.
