Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning

Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning

There’s a moment in Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning—somewhere between the ninth flashback and the fifth anguished close-up of Tom Cruise staring into the void—where you realize this isn’t just a movie. It’s a eulogy. A high-octane, bullet-sprayed, IMAX-swollen farewell note to a franchise that once found elegance in excess, now determined to collapse under the weight of its own mythology.

Let’s not sugarcoat it: the first hour of Final Reckoning is a slog. A self-serious parade of reverence, where every character seems less interested in the mission than in dramatically asking “What’s the plan?” like they’re auditioning for a Zack Snyder reboot of The West Wing. It opens not with a bang, but with a brooding Ethan Hunt in hiding, waiting for the plot to remember he exists. Angela Bassett’s President Sloane, full of a commanding presence, shows up to drag him out of retirement to face “The Entity”—a rogue AI so evil it’s essentially HAL 9000 in a glitchy YouTube window.

Gone is the playful energy that made even the wildest stunts of past entries feel grounded by sheer charisma. In its place is an oppressively serious tone that turns Ethan Hunt into a godlike martyr, with his loyal disciples—Luther, Benji, Grace, Paris—trailing behind like apostles, muttering exposition. McQuarrie and Cruise clearly want this to be their Endgame, but they forgot what made Mission: Impossible special wasn’t world-building. It was world-leaping. Literally.

The real magic of the film, and what ultimately keeps it from sinking under its own icebound submarine, comes when it finally stops talking and starts running. Cruise, ever the human special effect, hurls himself into two of the most dazzling action setpieces the series has ever seen—one underwater in a derelict Russian sub, and one in the sky involving dueling biplanes above the South African savannah. In these moments, Final Reckoning reclaims its mojo. These are not just stunts; they’re acts of cinematic defiance, a reminder that while AI may write your next playlist, it can’t climb the side of a plane with wind in its teeth.

Still, getting to those highs is an endurance test. The film spends so much time reminding us how important it is—through flashbacks, solemn declarations, and callbacks that feel more like contractual obligations—it begins to resemble a franchise obsessed with its own obituary. At 170 minutes, Final Reckoning is less a ride and more a pilgrimage, not to mention the oddly religious imagery ever-present.

The cast does what it can within the confines of the tone. Simon Pegg continues to be a national treasure as the endearingly stressed Benji. Ving Rhames’s Luther gets a rare emotional beat. Pom Klementieff broods beautifully, though the manic joy she brought to Dead Reckoning is sadly gone. Hayley Atwell, a franchise highlight last time around, spends much of her screen time gazing admiringly at Cruise’s messiah complex. And Esai Morales’s Gabriel, a villain so suave he could teach a masterclass in moustache-twirling, stalks the film like a ghost of Bond villains past, occasionally remembering he’s supposed to do something.

If Final Reckoning is truly the end (and don’t bet on it), it feels less like a final chapter and more like the second half of a two-part season finale where the writers forgot to trim the fat. It tries so hard to make a statement about legacy, AI, and what it means to be human in an increasingly synthetic world, that it forgets why we came in the first place: to see Tom Cruise nearly die for our entertainment.

In the end, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is frustrating, indulgent, and yet undeniably thrilling when it finally gets out of its own way. It’s a farewell tour with too many encores, but when the curtain finally falls, and Cruise turns the wheel—literally changing the aspect ratio—it’s impossible not to feel something. Maybe not awe, but appreciation. He did the thing. Again. And against all odds, it still kind of works.

3/5