Weekly visions - week 20, 2025

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, directed by Christopher McQuarrie, co-written with Erik Jendresen, US, 2023 - ⭐⭐⭐½

I revisited the previous Mission: Impossible in preparation for the latest episode appearing in cinemas soon, and I had the same reaction I experienced the first time: action at all costs, with confused storytelling, redeemed by a fantastic last section.
Again, I disliked the multiple ‘first scenes’ in this film, the multiple-people exposition in one of them - where each person tells a portion of the same sentence in an extremely unnatural way -, and the boldness of adding a completely new part of the lore to a franchise which is now sixty years old.
Plus, after listening for multiple hours to McQuarrie explaining his way of working on the Empire podcast, I think the ‘making it up as we go along’ approach really shows.

Naked Gun 33⅓: The Final Insult, directed by Peter Segal, written by Pat Proft, David Zucker and Robert LoCash, US, 1994 - ⭐⭐½

As I wrote in the last couple of weeks, I remembered the first Naked Gun almost scene-by-scene, and I could recall the second part of The Smell of Fear in some detail. For the third instalment, I had no recollection at all.
That’s because it’s largely forgettable: it has an amazing opening, then progressively it dissolves into a spoof of different genres, unexciting cameos(except for Full Metal Jacket’s R. Lee Ermey), and an uninspired third act.

Final Destination Bloodlines, directed by Zach Lipovsky and Adam B. Stein, written by Guy Busick, Lori Evans Taylor and Jon Watts, US, 2025 - ⭐⭐⭐½

The latest requel of the Final Destination franchise (in which most films are, essentially, remakes) is one of the best in the whole series; by now, Radio Silence’s favourite screenwriter Guy Busick is almost guaranteed to deliver funny effective gory films. During one scene, I laughed out loud - but I was the only one in the screening.
The extended obligatory ‘vision’ opening is excellent (if I have to choose one way to go, dying while dancing to Shout would be a strong contender), and the Tony Todd appearance is warmly moving.
I’m less enthusiastic about the second half of the film, where it takes some shortcuts that force smart characters to make some really stupid decisions.

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, directed by Christopher McQuarrie, co-written with Erik Jendresen, US, 2025 - ⭐⭐

The new Mission Impossible would officially come out the following week, but when I got out of the Final Destination screening, I found out that my cinema was having a sneaky ‘preview weekend’ for Ethan Hunt’s latest mission and the next show would be in twenty minutes… so I jumped back in (the great thing about having an ‘unlimited’ subscription!).
I was uncharacteristically anticipating almost three hours of intrigue and action… but what I got was a verbose, pompous, self-important film, with a confusing plot and just two set pieces, which everyone is enthusiastic about; to me, both were stretched out and uninteresting. We know Cruise likes to hang precariously from high places, and yes, I’m so thrilled to know he did it himself, again. Yawn.
I won’t go into spoilers here, but if anybody is willing to explain to me even why - from the plot point of view - we even have that final confrontation (wasn’t what Hunt was now trying to prevent the actual plan fifteen minutes earlier?) I’ll be happy to reappreciate the film.
The movie tries to position itself as an Endgame-like culmination of an 8-part saga via dubious revelations and forced callbacks, but fails spectacularly. It didn’t help that at some point all the characters kept repeating McQuarrie’s filmmaking mantra: ‘‘We’ll figure it out".
And, such a waste of Pom Klementieff, so prominent in the previous film, and here reduced to whispering words in French once in a while - like the M:I version of the beatboxing woman from Pitch Perfect.