jt4

Although I'm a Caucasian American, I have lived in Japan, speak the language fluently, and my wife is Japanese. I appreciate good Japanese cinema, and looked forward to seeing this when I learned it was directed by Koreeda Hirokazu, whose "The Third Murder" was, I thought excellent. But I gave up after 33 minutes. Despite having some actors that I recognized and respect, whatever was going to happen was taking so long that I no longer cared. Now, I can appreciate that some don't really care about that; that's fine. But not every movie from someone considered a top director is going to be their best work, and, for me, that applies in this case. So unless you have a couple of hours where you really just don't care, pay attention to the negative reviews here; there is a lot more substance there than you might normally think.

Dislaimer: This review isn't for those who idolize Tom Cruise and think "Top Gun: Maverick" is great filmmaking; don't waste your time reading this one when there will be plenty of other reviews here that suit you if you fall into that group.

For others that do care about storytelling:

The last two movies--with the very strange decision to name the successor "The Final Reckoning" instead of "Dead Reckoning Part Two--seem to be far more concerned with style than creating an impactful story. It's as though Tom and company got tired of thinking about what made people like the M:I movies--not that they were ever perfect; there has always been something of the "look at how cool we are" element even in the best entries like Mission: Impossible III. But these last two feel far more like paint-by-numbers: Pick an element of an action movie, throw a little twist in, and plug it in to the story. Repeat a few times to fill out a nearly three-hour movie instead of focusing on substance for two hours 15 minutes, and the audience will buy it. For extra points, you can even have the villain laughing maniacally at the hero's attempts to defeat him late in the movie even though he has shown no inclination to do so for the entirety of the two movies until now! Oh, but be sure, to wrap it up, that you have the other remaining "team" members--even if they weren't such before--each appear as if at random to look at the hero from a distance and then go on their way rather than coming to ask how he's doing or question what happened... because that looks so much cooler than anything people might actually do in a situation like that.

I found this movie on Hoopla. I have lived in Japan, so I like to look for Japanese movies and have had good luck with three movies I watched on Hoopla before this one. This, however, was not top-flight. Despite having fine actor Takenaka Naoto in a main role--see him in "Shall We Dance" if you're not familiar with him--the movie had something of a paint-by-numbers feel in a number of instances, being particularly cheesy and sentimental with a scene near the end that was extremely unrealistic. The dialog and music usage was also often amateurish. It's not a horrible movie by any means, but don't be fooled into thinking you will be watching something profound.