On Watching Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning as we witness a presidential abuse of power

 In this film Ethan Hunt must deal with a singularity or rather the singularity attempting to control all nuclear weapons. Wordwise, there are more than one of the singularities. In astrophysics it is usually used when referring to a black hole and in cosmology one has to deal with all of the universe under threat of being beyond our ken. In astrophysics and cosmology it is recognized that the singularities are not real. They are mathematical concepts. They are along for the ride in the attempt to discover an understanding of what one is faced with.

 Another singularity, the one in the film, is a technological singularity, a hypothetical one. For this one, we are of no use because AI has become able to do it all. This is, to us, a most singular situation. For the film the change in the state of affairs that constitutes the takeover by AI is summed into one and only one singularity, the Entity. It has likes and dislikes and doesn't like us, not a single person. It apparently likes itself and seeks safety from the nuclear destruction it will generate.

 It has no equals among us and no digital competitors, that is, no other singularities are allowed. In astrophysics there is more than one black hole and we regularly talk of alternative universes. But for technological prowess one assumes digital cannibalism reared its ugly circuits and only one recognized itself as It. We were of no concern. Our puny brain circuits were hardly worth mentioning. Anything else? If all is digital, it is over and out.

 But then the previous film mentioned a nondigital problem for everything digital since all is not digital. There is the analog way of doing things. Perhaps not completely managed in an analog fashion but at some point in the proceedings digital continuance is broken by analog insertion. Therefore, it is assumed the Entity can transcend the problem.

 Those people working on countering the Entity are in need of a source code. In truth, there would be no single code but there would be components assembled into a "source code" and so really it is the codes that are what is being sought. Or so one thinks for a time but at the last the Entity must be put in a bottle. No one said anything about a genie in a bottle. There is scant attempt at humor in the film. Most characters are stone faced such as for Atwell's role and Pom's intense stare. Cruise is only a man on a mission lacking the trust of the President and others. The President is faced with destruction of various target foreign cities and one American city she is to choose.

 Meanwhile Cruise is trying to bottle the bad genie. He has to enter a sunken Russian submarine to retrieve electronics that is to be mated with a dead team member's invention. The invention came into the hands of the main bad guy since he arranged for the team member's demise. Of course Cruise secures the item sought but the submarine visit is too lengthy a use of film time. He leaves the sub and heads too fast for the distant surface in super cold water without protective clothing. Of course he survives.

 Later the long sloppy haired hero performs too lengthy a derring-do biplane sequence and in the nick of time he mates the sub unit with the invention. Our survival depended on the President's hesitation about button pressing and a pickpocket's nifty skill level. The Entity is contained in a small transparent plastic box. It is green though the sources codes are most certainly colorless and not able to be fitted into a small container. The sum of equations is a small write out but it is inert unless the supporting equations are present as an explanation. Presumably an unexplained Entity without access to its circuitry could languish boxed for eternity.

 Also boxed are Hannah Waddington crammed into a role where dressed as little better than a feeble dentist she is poorly used. Also placed into a relationship boxed by expectations of emotion is the former Langley operative embarrassed by Hunt's suspension inches above what information could be obtained about 30 years ago. The Langley guy is again encountered after such a lapse of time thoroughly enamored with his wife in a needless refrain about the superiority of love to nuclear tipped missiles and all they can do.

 The end of all humanity is the goal of the Entity and Hunt is to prevent it. Too many previous films in the series make us aware of the outcome even if this film's dastardly resultant could not be acceptable. A film of the 80's, Wargames, had a more sprightly prevention of The End of It All. It is frankly more entertaining. Another film, with an unsuccessful prevention was Dr. Strangelove. In that film there was no such entity though we were trapped like the Entity of this film. Our entrapment came about from a abuse of power in a Cold War frame of mind that the expectation of nuclear weapon deployment had to be confirmed. The alternative was the insane justification for lack of implementation of those weapons. Peace is a nasty five letter word and Vietnam would soon become, unfortunately, another nasty word -  a very unacceptable synonym for the abuse of power.