Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning Review
Mission: Impossible is the best current American action movie franchise, and now it’s (allegedly) over.
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning. Skydance Media / Paramount Pictures
The Mission: Impossible film franchise has a history spanning nearly 30 years. Brian DePalma established it with Mission: Impossible in 1996, and after a misfire from John Woo with Mission: Impossible II in 2000, J.J. Abrams transformed the franchise with Mission: Impossible III in 2006, creating the template for the rest of the series. With a charismatic Tom Cruise leading the proceedings, continuously upping the ante with jaw-dropping stuntwork that he insists on performing himself, Mission: Impossible has consistently delivered the best action movie spectacles in the last two decades.
The eighth and latest, Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning, purportedly the last film in the long-running series, brings the story to a clumsy end. The film is a let-down from Christopher McQuarrie, who delivered the previous three excellent movies in Tom Cruise’s action franchise.
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning. Skydance Media / Paramount Pictures
Final Reckoning kicks off a couple of months after the events of Dead Reckoning (2023). Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his team are searching for the means to shut down the out-of-control AI known as the Entity. In the short time since the last film, the Entity has thrown the world into chaos—manipulating governments, the media, and even forming a cult of zealots who want to see the world destroyed. Hunt and company race against the clock to stop the Entity before it can take control of the entire world’s nuclear missile apparatus and exterminate humanity. Russian soldiers, American agents, and nemesis Gabriel (Esai Morales) stand in Hunt’s way.
Many characters from previous films return, including Hayley Atwell as Grace and Pom Klementieff as Paris, the most recent additions to Hunt’s team. Series regulars Ving Rhames and Simon Pegg return. Other characters also come back, including at least one surprising returning face. The performances are fine, with everyone doing their best to recite some of the series’ now trademark rapid-fire expository dialogue scenes. Tom Cruise makes Ethan Hunt more emotionally vulnerable, contrasting with his increasingly ridiculous—still incredible and riveting—physical feats that make him seem invulnerable as the embodiment of a male competence fantasy.
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning. Skydance Media / Paramount Pictures
The film’s action is impressive as ever, with two sequences in particular that stand out. The first is a thrilling heist sequence in which Hunt must retrieve a drive containing the Entity’s source code—the film’s greatest MacGuffin—from a sunken Russian nuclear submarine deep under the Arctic Circle. The dialogue-free set piece is tense, and the danger is more palpable than in many of the series’ other stunts. The other action sequence that stands out is the climactic, jaw-dropping biplane chase high in the air, where Hunt faces off against the increasingly unhinged villain Gabriel. It feels unique despite using the repeated series trope of Cruise hanging on to dear life on a speeding vehicle. Seeing it in IMAX was a treat.
Until the end, Mission: Impossible maintained its excellence in stunt choreography and putting that action on the screen. It’s a pity that the Academy Awards will only begin to recognize stunt design with films released in 2027, and Mission: Impossible will miss the category entirely if this indeed is the final picture in the series.
However, the quality of the action and the charisma of its cast don’t save Final Reckoning. It doesn’t feel like a complete movie; as the second part of a duology, it doesn’t stand independently, even though the prior film could. Narratively, it feels like a middle or final episode in a TV miniseries, something I don’t like to see in a feature. Pushing the envelope further, Final Reckoning gets into Marvel territory by suddenly making callbacks to details of several of the past films, retroactively weaving every event of Hunt’s career into the Entity’s nefarious plan in this film. It comes off as forced.
I didn’t like the Entity as an antagonist in Dead Reckoning, and I like it less here in Final Reckoning. It’s not present, it’s devoid of personality, and it’s too powerful. Ethan Hunt is essentially fighting God, and it’s not nearly as compelling as the series’ past villains. Gabriel just isn’t enough as a secondary baddie.
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning. Skydance Media / Paramount Pictures
The film balances the omnipotence of the Entity by elevating Ethan Hunt’s power and importance to a ridiculous level. This time, Hunt is the only man capable of saving the lives of billions of people and humanity from extinction. It’s silly to call anything in this franchise “grounded,” but it just goes too far here. In my eyes, it almost reaches parody.
As Tom Cruise’s final outing as Ethan Hunt, the film misses the mark. With Cruise’s age, another entry seems unlikely, and even if there were to be one, the ridiculous stakes in this movie make me question where things could go from here. I never thought I’d come out of a McQuarrie Mission: Impossible film with a middling impression of it, yet here we are.
Mission: Impossible - Final Reckoning will open in theaters on May 23, 2025.
