Last Action Hero: Tom Cruise’s last Mission Impossible in the home theater test

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It was translated with technical assistance and editorially reviewed before publication.

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Did Brian De Palma suspect almost 30 years ago what he would trigger with the first film adaptation of the popular series “Kobra, Take Over”? For the home theater release of the final, eighth film in the Mission Impossible series, we’re taking another look at the two-part conclusion of the franchise and also looking at the picture and sound quality of the Blu-ray Disc, Ultra HD Blu-ray (UHD) and streams. Spoiler: We are dealing with reference material here, where the streams also demonstrate excellent quality.

But first things first: Anyone who has only seen the eighth part in the cinema is pondering the confusion of the first hour. That’s why we’ll briefly talk about the plot and production before we move on to the technical details.

Exciting foreplay

Since De Palma launched the first impossible mission in 1996, Ethan Hunt has been working for the USA’s “Impossible Mission Force” (IMF) through masques, double deceptions and stunts on the verge of self-destruction. Dead Reckoning and The Final Reckoning are now pushing this principle into the digital endgame. A new kind of AI that has crawled everywhere, the Entity, begins by sinking a Russian submarine, leaving behind a two-part, cross-shaped key as the only entrance. Eugene Kittridge sets Hunt on the diving Ilsa Faust to secure one half of the key. In Rome, the clever thief Grace also crosses his plans, and soon half of the shadow world is chasing the same key, while Benji and Luther play the role of support and conscience, as they always have.

The trail leads from the airport via a train to the wreck that promises answers. And the closer the team gets, the more porous and vulnerable reality becomes: messages, money flows, orders, everything is manipulated. A sect even glorifies the entity, saviors and governments warn of the big unplugging. Where previous missions defused bombs, bioweapons or traitors, the infrastructure of modernity itself is now at stake and Ethan has to make the slowest decision of his career at great speed: How do you stop something that is everywhere without shutting down the world at the same time?

Dead Reckoning begins with a real nail-biter in the submarine and quickly finds the tone that recently made the series so smooth. The pace is right, the acting is spot on, the humor is on point instead of spreading unpleasantly. The chase in Rome (a Fiat 500 against rolling war equipment) is not only quickly choreographed, but also thrives on the great chemistry between Hayley Atwell and Tom Cruise. The airport mission at the beginning uses clever camera angles and drama, the train finale has the rare mix of retro adventure and thrilling stunt coordination.

Even if fans of the console game Uncharted were right to suspect theft of ideas. It helps that the AI ​​motif doesn’t remain just decoration: voice imitations, overly invasive autopilots, floods of data – all of this tickles our nerve endings in a very contemporary way and can even be amused with itself from time to time. There are deductions because there are too many parties tugging at the key and the story occasionally seems like a sleight of hand that takes a tad too long. Nevertheless: a very well-rounded, very entertaining action thriller.