The Snapshot: ‘The Final Reckoning’ aims high with explosive set pieces and emotional farewells—but gets bogged down by an overly complicated narrative that may leave audiences scratching their heads.

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning

7 out of 10

PG, 2hrs 50mins. Action Spy Drama.

Co-written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie.

Starring Tom Cruise, Hayley Atwell, Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, Esai Morales, Pom Klementieff, Henry Czerny and Angela Bassett.

Now Playing at Galaxy Cinemas Sault Ste. Marie.

If you don’t feel exhausted watching Tom Cruise and his unparalleled stunts in the new Mission: Impossible 8, you’ll definitely be exhausted by it’s unnecessary three hour run time. Matter of fact, the only thing that’s even longer is the full title.

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is the apparent end to the now 30-year-old spy franchise that redefined what was possible in the craftsmanship of stunts and action sequences in Hollywood. 

For a grand finale, however, Cruise and returning director Christopher McQuarrie have crafted a film that is surprisingly devoid of stunts and action scenes. When the big scenes happen – boy do they deliver. The infrequency just feels a bit disappointing.

Despite excellent production and attention to detail in its convoluted, sluggish story, this latest entry (McQuarrie’s fourth in the franchise, starting with 2015’s Rogue Nation) is bogged down by long stretches of exposition and name-dropping that will confuse 99 per cent of the audience.

The main conflict, of Ethan Hunt (Cruise) and his elite team trying to stop a dangerous AI from activating missiles and starting a nuclear war, far-fetched even when it began in 2023’s previous film Dead Reckoning; sort of a part one to this movie.

Read more here: Tom Cruise’s Dead Reckoning? An impressive, impossible mission

Yet the last film was far more successful in balancing scenes of dialogue and discovery with the perilous, impossible stunts that action fans are here for. Not only was Dead Reckoning easier to understand – it was also plainly more entertaining.

If you can put aside the ludicrous plot and just focus on the simpler concept of “good spies versus bad spies,” the rest of Mission Impossible 8 still offers editing, acting and production scale far greater than most blockbusters these days.

While the whole ensemble is great, Cruise is clearly the worthy star, and his submarine rescue sequence mid-way through the film really is a true show-stopper. Great music, camerawork and editing give boundless energy to this nearly 15 minute dialogue free scene when Cruise really appears to do the impossible.

The biplane chase and early prison break is also a highlight, though none of the stunts match the last film’s collapsing train escape that will likely keep it’s position at #1 for best in the series.

Having fun watching Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning really isn’t that hard: stop focusing on all the references from past movies and try to enjoy the action of the present. 

Ethan Hunt’s mission is to show composure in the face of danger. Audiences who stay relaxed and open will truly succeed in the impossible mission of processing what’s going on around them.

A final word: special credit goes to actress Hannah Waddingham, playing Rear Admiral Neely. This weekend, she marks an impressive feat: as an ensemble member in both Mission: Impossible 8 and Lilo & Stitch (also opening today), she joins a small group of performers in the cast of two movies planning to debut at #1 and #2 of the box office in the same weekend.

Thieves Like Us: Reichardt Wanders with an Inscrutable Slacker

Abstract paintings are not the only undefined objects in The Mastermind, the latest from Kelly Reichardt, who has become a master herself at creating quiet, emotionally resonant characterizations of lonely, isolated individuals struggling to overcome something. Usually, life is happening to them, but the main protagonist of this muted 1970 set tale jumps from the frying pan into the fire thanks to a foolhardy decision which throws his life into chaos. Civil unrest buzzes in the background as anti-war protests engulf the country, and it would seem a collectively frayed moral compass has also eroded the desperate family man looking for a way out of his own stagnation.

James Blaine Mooney (Josh O’Connor) is an art school drop out vaguely dabbling in construction, at least as he explains it to his parents (Hope Davis, Bill Camp), a respected Judge and his wife, to whom he already owes a significant amount of money. Married to Terri (Alana Haim), who supports them financially, along with two young sons, little does anyone know James has been planning to steal four paintings by Arthur Dove from the local museum. He’s assembled a team of two men who will put silk stockings over their heads and carry the paintings right out the front door while he serves as the getaway driver. However, when the day arrives, their best laid plans go awry. It’s not long before agents come knocking at James’ door, and so he goes on the run, visiting old friends (John Magaro, Gaby Hoffman) in the countryside. They have no desire to harbor a fugitive, and soon James resorts to petty crime to make a break for the Canadian border.

In many ways, The Mastermind intrigues as a deconstructed heist flick, disarticulated as it is from the expectations of the genre. For instance, compared to Peter Yates’ escapade about the pilfering of a diamond from a museum in The Hot Rock (1972), Reichardt utilizes only the skeleton of a crime caper while instead embracing the suburban malaise of the period. But neither is this a character study of James Mooney, who seems an intelligent, privileged social loafer who has fallen between the cracks of his own life.

It’s unclear what the exact end goal seems to be, as even the planning of the heist fails to break from his matter-of-fact behavior. Where’s his joy? He seems to have none. A conversation with Gaby Hoffman towards the end of the film provides a potential clue regarding why Arthur Dove’s paintings have courted his interest, and it would appear this might have been a desperate ruse to somehow tap into a happier, earlier time in his life.

It’s a scenario ripe for broad comedic strokes, but there’s a solemnity to the interactions between James and his two children. His wife, a muted Alana Haim, arguably seems to be focused on holding everything together whilst her drifting husband borrows money from his fussy mother (a brief but entertaining Hope Davis). Strangely, all the pieces seem to be assembled, but nothing coalesces in ways which draw us into the narrative. A final, karmic explosion ends on a wry note (through the kind of moment you’d expect to see in an episode of The Twilight Zone) but the build up is a glacial display of distraction.

Arguably, this is Reichardt’s way to visualize James’ ennui, a man focused on all the wrong details of his life. We spend long moments with him as he fusses about where to hide the paintings, the shirt’s he’s assembling while on the run, and then a deliberate break from the film’s cinematographic rhythm when DP Christopher Blauvelt observes him doctoring his passport. Of course, it’s all an ironic lark as James Mooney is not a master of anything and his mind’s distracted by obtaining some kind of obscure outcome not necessarily even monetarily beneficial, suggesting this was all an elaborate, subconscious ruse to sabotage his comfortable but boring life. Compared to Reichardt’s greatest hits thus far, it’s her least compelling presentation of a solitary, melancholic character to date.

Reviewed on May 24th at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival (78th edition) – Competition. 110 Mins.

★★½/☆☆☆☆☆

“Jane Austen Wrecked My Life” (or, “Jane Austen a gâché ma vie”) is a catchy, provocative title for writer/director Laura Piani’s debut feature, but it is a bit of a misnomer. Her heroine, Agathe (Camille Rutherford) might harbor that fear deep inside, but it’s never one that she speaks aloud. A lonely bookseller working at the famed Shakespeare and Company bookshop in Paris, she gets lost in the love notes left on the shop mirror, and complains to her best friend and coworker Felix (Pablo Pauly) that she was born in the wrong century, unwilling to engage in casual “digital” connection. Deeply feeling and highly imaginative, perhaps she believes she’s alone because she won’t settle for anything less than a Darcy.

Good thing then that Felix, posing as her “agent,” sends off a few chapters of her fantasy-induced writing to the Jane Austen Residency. And who should pick up Agathe from the ferry but a handsome, prickly Englishman, Oliver (Charlie Anson), the great-great-great-great-grandnephew of Ms. Austen herself. She can’t stand him. It’s perfect.

“Jane Austen Wrecked My Life” is the kind of warm romance that will make any bookish dreamer swoon, as this thoroughly modern woman with old-fashioned ideas about love experiences her own Austen-esque tumble through her own emotions. While she initially identifies with the wilting old maid Anne from “Persuasion,” her shyly budding connection with Oliver and questions about her blurred-lines friendship with Felix is more Elizabeth Bennett in “Pride and Prejudice.” A pastoral English estate is the ideal setting for such a dilemma.

The casting and performances are excellent for this contemporary, meta update to Austen — Rutherford is elegant but often awkward and fumbling as Agathe; Anson conveys Oliver’s passionate yearning behind his reserved, wounded exterior with just enough Hugh Grant-ian befuddlement. Pauly plays the impulsive charlatan with an irrepressible charm.

But it isn’t just the men that have Agathe in a tizzy. The film is as romantic about books, literature, writing and poetry as it is about such mundane issues as matters of the flesh. A lover of books and literature, Agathe strives to be a writer but believes she isn’t one because of her pesky writer’s block. It’s actually a dam against the flow of feelings — past traumas and heartbreaks — that she attempts to keep at bay. It’s through writing that Agathe is able to crack her heart open, to share herself and to welcome in new opportunities.

“Writing is like ivy,” Oliver tells Agathe, “it needs ruins to exist.” It’s an assurance that her broken past hasn’t broken her, but has given her the necessary structure to let the words grow. The way the characters talk about what literature means to them, and what it means to write, will seduce the writerly among the viewers, these discussions of writing even more enchanting than any declarations of love or ardent admiration.