Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning Review

There’s a point at which Tom Cruise’s fight against time and technology feels more dutiful than fun. That point is reached somewhere during the first of three (!) hours of Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, the last word on the series and Cruise’s long-running (literally) hero, Ethan Hunt. As a recap of everything since 1996’s opener, director Christopher McQuarrie does credibly land the plane; as an individual film, well, not everything is possible.

To begin with, while The Final Reckoning is the next film in the series, it’s not so separate from 2023’s Dead Reckoning. Which is to say, the tone and tempo of this film, its villain (Esai Morales and the evil AI known as the Entity), and even its narrative twists hold few surprises. For most (including me), more of Cruise running around the globe and getting himself and his team (including a returning Hayley Atwell and stalwart Simon Pegg) into outsized action setpieces is more than enough. And while it’s true this film does have those (including a deviously designed submarine sequence), it also feels exhausting to get into each one. The direct continuation is a part of that problem. But it’s also due to the heavy burden of the film’s mythology, which takes on comically large proportions here as each character explains the film’s theme (or has it explained to them) in turn. As crafted by McQuarrie and co-writer Erik Jendresen, these heroic self-referential loops have purpose—even if only for comedy, however unintended—yet the film’s shape and momentum struggle as a result.

Nevertheless, Cruise commits to his role and seems extra determined to entertain in The Final Reckoning, which brings things to a head. So while it’s not difficult to point out the film’s flaws, note the ridiculousness, and even wonder if all this effort was worth it, it also feels like over a century of filmmaking had to lead to Tom Cruise hanging off a biplane, in a fight for his life.