stunts

Early this month, the U.S. military and masked federal agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and from Customs and Border Protection invaded a park near downtown Los Angeles — ironically, a park named after Gen. Douglas MacArthur. They came ready for battle, dressed in tactical gear and camouflage, with some arriving on horseback, while others rolled in on armored vehicles or patrolled above in Black Hawk helicopters. Although the invasion force failed to capture anyone, it did succeed in liberating the park from a group of children participating in a summer camp.

The MacArthur Park operation sounds like a scene from “South Park,” but it really did happen — and its implications are terrifying. As Gregory Bovino, the Border Patrol agent in charge, said to Fox News: “Better get used to us now, ’cause this is going to be normal very soon. We will go anywhere, anytime we want in Los Angeles.” And President Trump is sending the same message to every Democratic governor and mayor in America who dares oppose him. He will send heavily armed federal forces wherever he wants, whenever he wants and for any reason.

The United States stands at the threshold of an authoritarian breakthrough, and Congress and the courts have given Trump a lot of tools. He’s learned from Jan. 6, 2021, that he needs tight control over the “guys with the guns,” as retired Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley put it. And that’s what he got when Congress dutifully confirmed Trump loyalists to lead all of the “power ministries” — the military, the FBI and the Department of Justice, the rest of the intelligence community and the Department of Homeland Security.

As commander in chief, the president can deploy troops and, under Title 10, he can also put National Guard troops under his command — even against the wishes of local officials. Gov. Gavin Newsom challenged the legality of Trump’s exercise of this authority in Los Angeles last month, and we will see what the courts say — but based on its initial rulings, the Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit appears likely to defer to the president. Under the Posse Comitatus Act, the troops cannot currently enforce laws, but Trump could change that by invoking the Insurrection Act, and we have to assume that the current Supreme Court would defer to him on that as well, following long-standing precedents saying the president’s power under the act is “conclusive.”

Trump could send the military into other cities, but the most dangerous weapon in his authoritarian arsenal might be the newly empowered Department of Homeland Security, which has been given $170 billion by Congress to triple the size of ICE and double its detention capacity.

No doubt, this will put Trump’s “mass deportation” into overdrive, but this is not just about immigration. Remember Portland in 2020, when Trump sent Border Patrol agents into the city? Against the wishes of the Oregon governor and the Portland mayor, the president deployed agents to protect federal buildings and suppress unrest after the killing of George Floyd. Under the Homeland Security Act, the secretary can designate any employee of the department to assist the Federal Protective Service in safeguarding government property and carrying out “such other activities for the promotion of homeland security as the Secretary may prescribe.”

Under that law, DHS officers can also make arrests, on and off of federal property, for “any offense against the United States.” This is why, in 2020, Border Patrol agents — dressed like soldiers and equipped with M-4 semi-automatic rifles — were able to rove around Portland in unmarked black SUVs and arrest people off the streets anywhere in the city. Trump could do this again anywhere in the country, and with the billions Congress has given to immigration and border agencies, DHS could assemble and deploy a formidable federal paramilitary force wherever and whenever Trump wishes.

Of course, under the 4th Amendment, officers need to have at least reasonable suspicion based on specific, articulable facts before they can stop and question someone, and probable cause before they arrest. And on Friday, U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong issued a temporary restraining order blocking ICE and Customs and Border Protection from making such stops without reasonable suspicion, and further holding that this could not be based on apparent race or ethnicity; speaking Spanish or speaking English with an accent; presence at a particular location, such as a Home Depot parking lot; or the type of work a person does. This ruling could end up providing an important constitutional restraint on these agencies, but we shall see. The Trump administration has appealed the ruling.

However, this litigation proceeds, it is important to note that the DHS agencies are not like the FBI, with its buttoned-down, by-the-book culture drilled into it historically and in response to the revelations of J. Edgar Hoover’s abuses of power. DHS and its agencies have no such baggage, and they clearly have been pushing the envelope in Los Angeles — sometimes brutally — over the last month. And even if Frimpong’s ruling stands up on appeal, ICE and Customs and Border Protection will no doubt adapt by training their officers to articulate other justifications for stopping people on the street or in workplaces. Ultimately, these agencies are used to operating near the border, where, in the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist’s words, the federal government’s power is “at its zenith,” and where there are far fewer constitutional constraints on their actions.

These are the tools at Trump’s disposal — and as DHS rushes to hire thousands of agents and build the detention facilities Congress just paid for, these tools will only become more formidable. And one should anticipate that Trump will want to deploy the DHS paramilitary forces to “protect” the 2026 or 2028 elections, alongside federal troops, in the same way they worked together to capture MacArthur Park.

A fanciful, dystopian scenario? Maybe, but who or what would stop it from happening? Congress does not seem willing to stand up to the president — and while individual federal judges might, the Supreme Court seems more likely to defer to him, especially on issues concerning national security or immigration. So, in the words of Bruce Springsteen, “the last check on power, after the checks and balances of government have failed, are the people, you and me.” Suit up.

Seth Stodder served in the Obama administration as assistant secretary of Homeland Security for borders, immigration and trade and previously as assistant secretary for threat prevention and security. He teaches national security and counterterrorism law at USC Law School.

CANNES, France — Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt arrived in France in 1996’s “Mission: Impossible” clinging to a high speed train through the Chunnel, pursued and nearly skewered by a helicopter. It was, as the French might say, une entrée dramatique. In 2018’s “Mission: Impossible — Fallout,” he leapt from an airplane to plummet four-and-a-half miles down to the glass roof of Paris’ Grand Palais and now, for the big finale of his franchise, “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning,” he’s come to conquer the Cannes Film Festival.

One boisterous fan outside the premiere shoved her Chihuahua at Cruise so he could see it was wearing a pink sweatshirt with his face. Another brandished a DVD of 2000’s “Mission: Impossible 2,” arguably the worst entry in the series. Cruise took a photo with her anyway. “Le selfie!” the red-carpet announcer cried.

The series hasn’t been kind to its French actors: Emmanuelle Béart was shot, Jean Reno blown up by exploding chewing gum, Léa Seydoux kicked out of a window at the Burj Khalifa. (Pom Klementieff, whose character’s name is Paris, has survived to co-star in this eighth entry.) Yet, you didn’t have to parler français to glean the excitement on the ground.

This is only Cruise’s third trip to Cannes and it took him nearly half an hour to walk the 60 yards of red carpet, an exhausting amount of waving, even for someone lauded for his cardio. He took care to acknowledge everyone who’d come to cheer, even trotting back down a few steps to make eye contact and thump on his heart for the fans in the corner flank.

In 2022, as part of the lead-up to “Top Gun: Maverick,” the blockbuster that would defibrillate the pandemic box office, Cruise received an honorary Palme d’Or and a salute from eight zipping French jets. During his first visit, for 1992’s “Far and Away,” times were different and he felt free to be outspoken, telling the press that the then-recent Rodney King verdict “sickened me.” Today, he seems to feel the weight of championing the theatrical experience, just as Ethan Hunt is repeatedly forced to shoulder the burden of saving the world. Neither of them truly has the freedom to “choose to accept it.” More than any of his movie star peers, Cruise seems aware that someone has to symbolize an increasingly bygone era of filmmaking, to be this century’s Charlie Chaplin.

The vibe before the screening of “Final Reckoning” was a bit bar mitzvah. The DJ alternated between dance-floor classics — Kool & the Gang, Joan Jett — and remixes of Lalo Schifrin’s pulsating “Mission: Impossible” theme, one by four beatboxers who mimicked police sirens, another classed-up by a live saxophone and violins. This year’s big Cannes fashion headline is that women are no longer allowed to wear “voluminous” frocks on the steps. Nevertheless, Hayley Atwell, who plays Grace, a pickpocket-turned-secret-agent, wore a gown on the daring end of puffy. Red with large flares at her hips and ankles, she resembled the vintage biplane Cruise dangles from in the film. He could have clung onto her elbow for a teaser.

But when the movie started, the mood turned funereal. This farewell to Ethan Hunt begins with a three-decade-spanning montage of Cruise that could double as the intro to his inevitable honorary Oscar. “I want to thank you for a lifetime of unrelenting and devoted service,” Angela Bassett’s President Erika Sloane tells Ethan in the opening minute. Later, she slips him a code with an important date — May 22, 1996 — which also happens be the day the “Mission: Impossible” franchise launched. The whole film is a panegyric: big speeches and weighty moments with very little sense of play. Tonally, it starts with an ending and keeps on ending for the next 2 hours and 49 minutes.

The eight “Mission” films can be cleaved into two groups. The first four made a point of swapping directors and moods and even Ethan’s core identity: Brian De Palma made him a jaundiced naif; John Woo, a hot-blooded flirt; J.J. Abrams, a devoted husband; Brad Bird, a near-mute human cartoon. The last four are all helmed by Christopher McQuarrie (who’s co-written this script with Erik Jendresen) but neither has added much to his personality. We’re told, over and over, that Ethan is a gambler and a rule-breaker — and paradoxically, that he’s the only human worthy of our trust, an odd thing to say about a spy who wears masks of other people’s faces like party hats.

Of all the “Mission: Impossible” films, this is the only one that needs you to remember what happened in the previous entry, 2023’s “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One,” which introduced an all-knowing AI villain called the Entity and its equally unemotional minion Gabriel (Esai Morales) that made a fun foil for Cruise himself, as a sinister duo that values digital trickery over human sweat. Now, the Entity intends to annihilate humanity in four days unless it can be taken offline by a key that accesses a gizmo in the Arctic Sea that connects to a whatsit that Ving Rhames’s weary Luther is attempting to invent from a makeshift hospital bed somewhere in the subway tunnels of London. A grunting Cruise batters a goon while huffing, “You spend! Too much time! On the internet!”

That last film managed to introduce Atwell’s Grace and collect the key while still enjoying a sense of play, like an axle-cracking Fiat chase through Rome and flirtations manifested via close-up magic. Here, the plot weighs everything down. Not just the threat-of-extinction stuff, which includes Bassett’s POTUS debating which American city to blow up as a preemptive gesture, but by its own irritating God’s-eye omniscience that rarely allows the suspense to spool out in the present. The editing is always cutting to the past or the future. There’s flashbacks to things that happened five minutes earlier and flash-forwards to how a stunt could look instead of just getting on with it.

Just as exhausting is how the entire cast trades lines of exposition to explain Ethan’s daredevil feats before he actually does them. There are almost no conversations, only premonitions and plans delivered in bullet-points like a group research project. No one steps on anyone else’s dramatic pauses. They may as well be reciting how to build an IKEA Billy bookcase. I can’t think of anything more thrill-stifling, even with cinematographer Fraser Taggart lighting everybody’s eyeballs to look so shiny that the actors continually appear on the verge of tears. Still, even within those limitations, Simon Pegg is delightful as Hunt’s longtime tech-whiz teammate Benji, as are new and returning ensemble members Tramell Tillman, Lucy Tulugarjuk and Rolf Saxon, the latter of whom plays a throwback character once threatened with manning a radar tower in Alaska — a punishment that did, in fact, come to pass.

But Cruise is reason audiences will, and should, see “Final Reckoning” on a large and loud screen. His Ethan continues to survive things he shouldn’t. (One too-miraculous rescue attempts to distract us from asking questions by inserting an out-of-place close-up of Atwell’s heaving bosom.) Yet, what I’ve most come to appreciate about Ethan is that he doesn’t try to play the unflappable hero. Clinging to the chassis of an airplane with the wind plastering his hair to his forehead and oscillating his gums like bulldog in a convertible, he is, in fact, exceedingly flapped.

The flight chase is fantastic. It’s what Isaac Newton might have made if he’d demonstrated velocity by placing an apple in a bucket and whipping it in circles. But even its exhilaration gets bested by a centerpiece underwater sequence in which Cruise scuba dives alone in silence suffering stunts that you cannot believe. I couldn’t tell you how long he swam — at some point, my heart stopped — but there are images of vertical sheets of water and the star in shivering, fetal isolation that felt like the franchise wasn’t just trying to top itself, but hoping to best “Titanic” and “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

As the sound design rumbled with queasy creaks over shots of a submarine teetering on the edge of a deep-sea cliff, I found myself thinking most of all of that famous sequence of a frozen shack sliding off a cliff in Charlie Chaplin’s 1925 “The Gold Rush,” which celebrates its centennial anniversary this fall. By coincidence or grand design, a gorgeously restored “The Gold Rush” was also the first movie screened at this year’s Cannes. If there’s a Cannes in 2125, maybe it’ll play a 100-year-old Tom Cruise classic. It won’t be this “Mission: Impossible” over the first, third or fourth. Regardless, I bet the fans will still be cheering.