Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning
Since 1996, Tom Cruise has been delighting fans as Ethan Hunt, performing a series of death-defying stunts, from climbing the world’s tallest building to jumping a motorbike off the side of a mountain and dangling outside a plane. The movies have featured some of the most audacious set pieces put to film as Hunt and his team have thwarted villains’ plans. The series now reaches its eighth and most likely final outing with The Final Reckoning, a direct sequel to 2023’s Dead Reckoning. Does the series go out with a bang, or does the fuse fizzle out?
We pick up a few weeks after the events of Dead Reckoning, with Hunt in possession of a key that will unlock the rogue AI, The Entity’s source code. Safe to say the forces of good and evil want their hands on this key to be able to control it. It is a race against time to stop nuclear armageddon, with the stakes never higher.
The first hour feels stitched together, overly filled with dense exposition and flashbacks to events of previous films, tying them to Ethan’s fight against the AI. We interact with so many new and returning characters, it is certainly the most overstuffed Mission: Impossible feature to date. Unlike preceding instalments, where there is heart-pounding action from the get-go, this movie takes its time to find its stride, and at two hours and 50 minutes, really strains under its runtime.
In the second half, a pair of stunts, in a submarine and involving two bi-planes, really do take your breath away in a fashion this franchise is familiar with. Unlike Fallout or Ghost Protocol, however, the plot is nowhere near as tight, and with the main villain being the unseen AI, it lacks a Solomon Lane or Owen Davian. Essai Morales’s Gabriel factors all too briefly in a feature of this length, but his ultimate connection to Ethan from before the IMF was never explored in a meaningful way.
Cruise commits himself to the action in a compelling way, showing Ethan’s determination to win at all costs. He is once again ably supported by Hayley Atwell as master thief Grace, now a confidant, Simon Pegg’s Benji Dunn and Ving Rhames’s Luther. Of the new additions, Severance’s Tramell Tillman steals the small segment he’s in with a charismatic turn as submarine Captain Bledsloe, a key part of Ethan’s mission.
Director Christopher McQuarrie has certainly helped to keep audiences invested in the franchise since his first film in the series, Rogue Nation, in 2015. Here, however, it feels like his and Cruise’s attempts to outdo previous instalments have come at the expense of telling an engrossing story. As with Dead Reckoning, it feels like the plot is entirely tailored to find the next set piece. When they are as electrifying and awe-inspiring as here, it does make up for shortcomings elsewhere. However, the overall issues within the feature are certainly more noticeable than in some other entries in the series.
The Final Reckoning is not without its clear high points, namely the two major action sequences; however, unlike the franchise at its absolute best, it struggles to keep itself airborne for much of its runtime, with some of the weakest storylines and far too many characters who ultimately have little to do. If indeed this is the final Mission: Impossible film, as a farewell to the series it is creaky in places but has all the soaring action fans would want from it.
Christopher Connor
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is released nationwide on 21st May 2025.
Watch the trailer for Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning here:
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