Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning

I am a huge fan of the Mission: Impossible franchise so I was beyond excited to see Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning at a Thursday preview with my sister last night.  It is unbelievably convoluted but it is an epic and heartfelt conclusion to the series (if, in fact, it is actually the conclusion) and we both loved it!  Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) now has the cruciform key needed to acquire the source code for the Entity from the wreckage of the Russian submarine Sevastopol.  However, Gabriel (Esai Morales) has stolen the malware, called the poison pill, created by Luther (Ving Rhames) which will enable him to control it.  Ethan and his team, Benji (Simon Pegg), Grace (Hayley Atwell), Paris (Pom Klementieff), and Degas (Greg Tarzan Davis), must get the source code from the submarine and the poison pill from Gabriel before the Entity gains access to the world's nuclear codes and before President Sloane (Angela Bassett) launches a preemptive strike to mitigate the fallout for the United States.  They must also evade CIA Director Kittridge (Henry Czerny) and Agent Briggs (Shea Whigham), who have personal reasons for stopping Ethan.  The first hour is really exposition heavy but, once it gets going, there are some amazing action set pieces (Tom Cruise is a madman).  I especially loved the cross-cutting between a scene of hand-to-hand combat between Ethan and a sailor on a submarine and a scene where the team fights a group of Russian soldiers on an island in the Bering Sea and, of course, the much hyped aerial sequence between Ethan and Gabriel on a biplane is spectacular (it is even better than I was expecting) but my favorite scene is a breathtaking underwater sequence where Ethan dives to the wreckage of the Sevastopol and gets trapped (I was on the edge of my seat the whole time because the sound design is so foreboding).  I also enjoyed Ethan's arc because he feels the weight of all of his decisions even more in this installment and there are some really touching moments between him and several other characters (especially with one from his earliest mission) which lead to a very satisfying resolution for him.  Cruise shines in a role he has been playing for thirty years (a montage of all of his missions while he is receiving his latest one is very well done) and the rest of the large cast does a great job (the standout for me is Tramell Tillman as the captain of a submarine because one of his line readings made me laugh out loud).  It is not without faults (I had only the vaguest notion of why things needed to happen and a scene where Ethan communicates directly with the Entity is a bit silly) but it is exhilarating and it must be seen on the big screen (my sister and I are already planning to see it again in IMAX).

Note:  I rewatched all of the earlier movies in preparation for this one and I think Fallout is still my favorite.