Mission: Impossible -- The Final Reckoning (2025)

So much for calling it Dead Reckoning Part 2. Just as well. Once again, I watched at the earliest opportunity, only this time, it was to celebrate my birthday.

The movie begins two months after the end of the previous. Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) has acquired a key for apprehending the Entity, but he doesn't know where to use it yet. Murderous Gabriel (Esai Morales), having fallen from the Entity's favor, now hopes to gain everything needed to control the Entity himself. Both had better hurry, because the Entity is gradually seizing all the nuclear missiles in the world, evidently planning to annihilate humans but not itself. The CIA director-turned-U.S. president (Angela Bassett) gives Ethan three days before she launches a preemptive attack on the other nations. To make matters more difficult, the chaos sown by the Entity's expert deep fakes has inspired a considerable pro-apocalyptic movement, and not all its members are overt....

Mission: Impossible -- Dead Reckoning Part 1 (2023)

What a trickily punctuated title. Someone must regret that the original had a colon. Anyway, since the past three sequels had been going strong and Christopher McQuarrie was still directing, I figured it was a worthy way to fill an evening. Kinda surprised there weren't more people in my theater on its U.S. debut.

What can possibly challenge Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) anymore, when even age doesn't seem to slow him down? An online AI gone self-aware and rogue, now known only as "the Entity," has been infiltrating all kinds of sensitive information systems. Ethan's mission is to collect the two halves of a key that promises access to the Entity somewhere, but once he understands that the government wants to control rather than destroy the Entity, he himself goes rogue. Not only does he once again have Impossible Missions Force support only from Luther (Ving Rhames) and Benji (Simon Pegg), with the rest of the IMF after them, but they can't rely much on their state-of-the-art equipment with the Entity compromising things. To make matters worse, sadistic terrorist Gabriel (Esai Morales), a personal foe from before Ethan joined the IMF, is serving the Entity's interest.

Top Gun: Maverick (2022)

When I saw Top Gun for the first time about a decade ago, I didn't get much out of it. I couldn't remember much later besides the control tower buzzing and the death of a wingman, and it seemed to me there wasn't all that much action for a designated action flick. But in light of the sequel's much better reception, I had to check it out. Maybe it would be like the later Mission: Impossible entries.

For decades, "Maverick" Mitchell (Tom Cruise) has been content to turn down promotions above his U.S. Navy captaincy and serve as a skilled if rather unruly test pilot. But with drones being the apparent wave of the future, his superiors offer him only one choice for further flights in the service: teaching at the Strike Fighter Tactics Instructor program, a.k.a. TOPGUN. They wouldn't give him even that if not for his buddy-turned-admiral "Iceman" Kazansky (Val Kilmer). Mav has very little time to train a small group of aviators and pick the best for bombing a canyon base. And unlike supervising admiral "Hammer" Cain (Ed Harris), he wants to ensure they not only complete the objective but all make it home safe. He never was one to accept theoretical limits.

Tropic Thunder (2008)

Initially, I put this title off because I felt like I'd already learned all there is to know about it. Then I put it off more when I learned that Ben Stiller starred and directed (he's even more of a red flag for me than Will Ferrell) and Jack Black was among the highest billed. But recently, I heard an interview in which Robert Downey Jr. reflected fondly on it. Maybe it would be worth a viewing after all.

The production of a modern Vietnam War epic is going slowly and over budget, apparently because the director (Steve Coogan) doesn't know how to work with prima donnas. At the advice of the gritty writer of the book being adapted (Nick Nolte), he sends the five main actors deeper into the jungle for a more authentic experience. Little does any of them know that this jungle is home to a strong gang of heroin manufacturers, who mistake the fake soldiers for Drug Enforcement Administration officers (do they have international jurisdiction?). The actors, in turn, take a little while to realize that the criminals aren't other actors.

Mission: Impossible — Fallout (2018)

For once, an M:I entry has the same director as last time. As such, it enjoys clearer continuity than usual, perhaps helping us remember the order of the unnumbered sequels. (I might have been the only person in my theater to recognize a callback to the first movie in the form of a funeral for "Max.")

The Apostles, the Syndicate's offshoot following the arrest of leader Solomon Lane (Sean Harris), have acquired three nuclear bombs and plan to sell them to a terrorist code-named John Lark. Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) accepts the mission to stop them, partly by impersonating Lark. But while the FBI director (Alec Baldwin) trusts the Impossible Missions Force now, the CIA director (Angela Bassett) doesn't, so Ethan must go with CIA agent August Walker (Henry Cavill), who's not introduced with good humor and thus will be obnoxious at best. Indeed, Walker initiates the suspicion that Ethan is Lark....

Collateral (2004)

Oops, already another noir about hit men. Well, this doesn't have much else in common.

Max (Jamie Foxx), an especially good taxi driver in L.A., agrees to bend the rules and hang around to take out-of-towner Vincent (Tom Cruise) to five destinations in one night, in light of a lucrative offer. But at the first destination, Vincent accidentally reveals that he's a hit man, with four more kills to make on a contract with a drug lord (Javier Bardem). Max wants no part in it, but he doesn't have much choice anymore. An occasional other focal character is Detective Fanning (Mark Ruffalo), whose connection to the first victim draws his attention quickly.

Edge of Tomorrow (2014)

My second favorite medium is video games. This rarely has the slightest bearing on my choices for my favorite medium; I've never seen all of any movie adapted from a game (Wreck-It Ralph doesn't count). But when I learned the premise of this sci-fi feature, I thought, "Huh, so the hero has a save point and infinite lives. Intriguing." To put it in more cinematic terms, it sounded like Groundhog Day, only substituting action for comedy. Oh, and it's not a 24-hour cycle: Only death serves for a reset.

I had not realized just how much emphasis would be on the sci-fi in other regards. A montage in the beginning establishes a war on Earth against aliens, in which humans have won only one battle so far. A handful of humans know why the invaders are so effective: innate time travel properties, combined with a hive mind. Whenever an elite "Alpha" dies, the "Omega" turns back the clock to a set point, retaining memories that the humans don't -- unless the Alpha's blood covers a human, thereby granting him the sole power of automatic resets, along with occasional telepathic connections with the Omega, for as long as he has the right blood in his body. That's what happens to protagonist Major Bill Cage (Tom Cruise, still quite watchable), but even demonstrating "foreknowledge" doesn't reliably convince others of his ability, apart from Sgt. Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt), who used to be like him. Together, they hope to minimize if not prevent a disastrous ambush and, if possible, kill the Omega.

Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (2015)

If someone had told me after the first or second M:I entry that there would be a fifth in 2015, I would have dismissed the prediction with a raspberry. If someone had told me in 2006 that it would star Tom Cruise, I would have rolled my eyes. Funny how these things change.

In Ghost Protocol, Ethan Hunt and company had their remote support cut off and dealt with failing gadgetry among other new problems. This time it's worse: The CIA director (Alec Baldwin), believing that the Impossible Missions Force made up the destructive force known as the Syndicate to justify its own less ruly acts, gets the IMF officially disbanded. When Ethan doesn't stop doing what he does, he becomes a wanted man, worrying the few people willing to help him track down Syndicate honcho Solomon Lane (Sean Harris, who needs little more than a stone face).