'Mission: Impossible - Final Judgement': Farewell to the best of heroes in the worst of times

Few action films are capable of restoring the taste of the old-fashioned ritual of cinema to modern viewers. Mission: Impossible, a franchise born almost three decades ago from the 1966 series created by Bruce Geller, remains one of them. We know what we're going to see, we know the hero's next steps and the archetypes that surround him, and yet, everything is a surprise. The Cannes Film Festival premiere of Mission: Impossible: Final Verdict. closes the diptych that began in 2023 Mortal Sentence and is also supposed to close the saga, although the ambiguous ending does not completely close the door and raises doubts.

What's not in dispute is that its director, Christopher McQuarrie , has captured some of the best moments of the adventure that Brian de Palma began in 1996, and that its star, Tom Cruise, has achieved such symbiosis with his character, Ethan Hunt, that it borders on reckless. The actor takes a risk, and when he jumps out of a plane or off a cliff, his adrenaline permeates every shot. This thirst for real action, as we know, is part of the success of a series that, even in its worst installments, has something. That something is Tom Cruise.

Mission: Impossible - Dead Sentence set the bar very high two years ago, perhaps too high for this conclusion. That film, along with De Palma's, is among the best in the entire franchise; and not just for the spectacular action sequences. The second part opens with a nostalgic collage of Ethan Hunt's past, that shadowy, suicidal agent without whom the world would be lost.

The film is peppered with a series of flashbacks —homages to the hero and some of his villains—that take away from the whole story; they're quite unnecessary. A CIA agent linked to one of the most iconic sequences from the beginning of the saga is also revived. The villain remains The Entity, an AI capable of destroying the notion of truth and, therefore, humanity. Angela Bassett returns to the spotlight as the President of the United States, and Hunt's team includes the same old cast, although a certain renewal indicated in the first part, "Dead Sentence," is established. Vanessa Kirby and Rebecca Ferguson are missing, the latter replaced in the heart of Cruise-Hunt by Hayley Atwell.

Hunt and his key to fighting lies remain the guiding thread of an apocalyptic action that has two overwhelming moments, one underwater (perhaps the most spectacular and grandiose on screen) and another aboard some small planes that makes your hair stand on end. Very early on, we hear that Ethan Hunt is the best of heroes in the worst of times, and that phrase seems to be expressly dedicated to Cruise, who, at 62 years old and after having nearly killed himself several times for refusing to use a stunt double, has turned M:I into his way of defending a spectacle that is not the same when, no matter how hyperbolic and rich it may be, it lacks human support. Cruise's effort, his dedication and faith in this kind of cinema are at odds with the times we live in and with a cinema (not just action) doomed to the tyrannical power of the algorithm and the abuse of digital effects.

Filmed over seven years, including a pandemic and two Hollywood strikes, as McQuarrie recalled yesterday at the opening gala, Mission: Impossible: Dead Man's End and Last Judgment Day signal Cruise's farewell to the action scene. First, Daniel Craig hung up his gloves as James Bond, then Harrison Ford said goodbye to the last adventurer, Indiana Jones, and everything points to the fact that now it's the turn of the last real-life action hero. Yesterday, as the legendary theme song composed for the series by Lalo Schifrin played with a live orchestra, the Mission: Impossible ritual continued. And that emotion persists even in the worst of times.