benmaffin

The final Mission: Impossible entry should've gone out with a bang. Instead, it limps to the finish line with a bloated runtime, tangled plotlines, and a steady stream of characters explaining the plot to each other (and to us) as if we're stuck in a live audiobook of a spy thriller that forgot to thrill.

Yes, there are flashes of brilliance, a few solid fight scenes and one nicely handled touch that nearly redeems it. But they're buried under so many layers of exposition and mid-tier subplots that the film collapses under its own weight. It's less a high-octane finale and more a confused boardroom drama with occasional punches.

There's a callback to Mission: Impossible III that no one buys for a second, I rewatched it straight after just to be sure. Nice try. But no.

Gone is the sharp, sexy, fast-paced energy of the original. That film had wit, charm, and a cheeky sense of fun. This one feels like a committee project dragged out in reshoots and tied together with chewing gum and despair.

If this is the reckoning, maybe it's time to rewind. Watch the first film again, it holds up. And when the inevitable prequel rears its head, let's pray Hollywood doesn't fumble it with more over-stuffing and soulless sheen.

As for the future: it'll flop, AI will be blamed, and somewhere a screenwriter will wonder if maybe they should've written something worth remembering instead of "Tom Cruising" along on fumes.

The Electric State takes Simon Stålenhag's haunting, textured vision of a broken future and drags it through the Hollywood sanitiser until all that's left is a 12-rated soft-focus mess. What should have been bleak and beautiful ends up feeling like a glossy promo for overpriced concept art prints.

The setup tries to sell us a dystopia while setting up a tired road trip plot and a moody robot sidekick.

Millie Bobby Brown is supposedly playing a vulnerable child, but she looks 20, because she is 20. She's styled like a jarg Jennifer Lawrence, as if brooding expressions alone could carry emotional weight. They can't.

Meanwhile, the robot designs look like leftovers from Chappie, which was already a horrific misfire in the first place. Some scenes feel lifted straight from that cinematic bin fire. For all its retro charm, Short Circuit from the '80s actually did a better job of making a robot seem real and sympathetic.

Chris Pratt's wig? More layered than the plot. Probably better directed, too.

Watch it for the misfire it is, then go create your own AI art version of the film. It'll be closer to what Stålenhag probably imagined and miles less embarrassing.

Damien Molony could've been a cracking Bergerac; proper old-school detective, rough around the edges but sharp where it counts. But instead, he's stuck in a role that's so strangled by modern TV tropes it must've felt like trying to sprint through quicksand. A more Nettles-like approach? That could've worked. But this? This was suffocating.

Philip Glenister was a decent pick-solid, reliable. The rest? Let's be honest, they weren't anything memorable. It felt like a checklist exercise, ticking off characters rather than building a believable team.

Zoë Wanamaker signing up for this? Baffling. Maybe she felt a bit jealous that her My Family co-star Kris Marshall got his own island gig with Death in Paradise and fancied a piece of the action. Or maybe Jersey's where she stashes her cash, and this just happened to be a convenient bit of casting. Either way, it wasn't exactly a performance that screamed passion for the project, more like someone along for the ride.

Then there's the soundtrack. Someone, somewhere thought it was a great idea to blend the original theme with Sherlock. The result? A jarring mess that had me half-expecting Benedict Cumberbatch to appear. In fact, I was praying for it-because this was dull. Painfully so.

There was a nod to Bergerac's old Triumph, and fair play to them for that. A nice throwback. But that alone wasn't going to save this train wreck. At least they had the sense not to put him in a Prius-small mercies.

I'll give them credit for trying, but whether this disaster was down to their own incompetence or the usual industry pressure to churn out safe, vanilla content is anyone's guess.

Either way, don't waste your time. Stick to the original Bergerac. It's still out there, still watchable. This? It's already dead in the water.