Does Digger strike black gold, or is it more of a Deepwater Horizon (the ecological disaster, not the film)? For the first two thirds, I thought I knew what I was getting; it fits the bill of a pretentious, swing-for-the-fences film that will irritate or confuse most of its audience, and charm the few that are left. But there’s a key speech from a character played by Jesse Plemons, near the end, that helped win me over a bit and counterbalance some of the earlier frustration.
Read MoreBy morphing the series from episodic adventures to a cohesive, serialized format, some of the flimsiness of the characters and the story begins to show. Both Dead Reckoning and The Final Reckoning try to retcon Hunt’s backstory, giving him a dead love interest and an oath to the Impossible Mission Force (IMF) that he’s seemingly repaid many times over. The screenplay recontextualizes old plot elements, like the so-called Rabbit’s Foot from M:I 3, into this film, to apparently sweep us up into the feeling that we’ve been on a grand journey with the series for 29 years.
Read MoreThe film is very aware the story is not its strong suit; the entire plot is explained in the first 10 minutes in classic Mission: Impossible secret message fashion, and then promptly ushers you into an incredible two-hour escape. What’s most impressive is that it feels like there’s a legitimate mental and physical weight to the things Cruise is put through and that’s undeniably a part of his charm.
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