Matt!’s review published on Letterboxd:
Really don’t enjoy being the poopoo person here but outside of two (beyond insane) extended action set pieces, I just did not care for this. Nearly 3 hours (!!!) of awkwardly clunky exposition that made me feel absolutely nothing while trying to be some emotional send-off event for a franchise I generally see as solidly consistent. Didn’t help that the first 60-90 minutes were like one of those old school sitcom “series highlight reel recap” episodes with a self-jerk fest of manufactured nostalgia and member berries. Every plot beat exists solely to inform the next plot beat, logic Evel Knievel’s itself into a ball of fire before the halfway mark, and the number of deus ex machina new whizzbang tech thingamabobs skyrockets through the roof until you’re left realizing that this whole thing is pretty much just a parody of itself. Also, it came off as super weird that after making Ultron—I mean, THE ENTITY—in Dead Reckoning seem like this ominously intimidating big bad, the movie has Cruise & Co interact with it almost not at all for the entire duration of the film? And instead they explain the newfound international state of affairs by just periodically panning over an online Risk board and compiling some lame ass poorly-narrated news footage of wooden Redditors making biblical statements at student rallies?? Fuck off, at least commit to the absurdity of having HAL be a conniving little instigator and doing more cool voice mimicking and face erasing shit!
Cruise 1000% still has the juice but from a pure blockbuster perspective, this is so not it. Feeling very thankful rn that the Daniel Craig Bond films actually had the balls to put a definitive punctuation mark at the “end” of their franchise instead of going on an entire farewell tour but then leaving room for another potential sequel (which I would still watch, btw). Guess I’ll see you again at 70, Tom.
I hate that I hated this, and I hate that I’ll probably love it more upon rewatch. I think I’m just at that stage in my life where anything over 2 hours long better damn well justify its runtime, and this ain’t even close. Alright, sourpuss rant over.
