Movie Review: Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning

06/07/2025 by Corrye Van Caeseele-Cook

Plot: Two months after the events of Dead Reckoning, the globe is in chaos. The A.I. known as the Entity continues to seize control of the world’s nuclear systems and seeks to create a new world order. Aided by a doomsday cult that believes the Entity will usher in a new Golden Age, the Entity knows its only weakness is its original source code, located in the sunken Russian submarine the Sevastopol. Although ordered to surrender the cruciform key that will unlock the Entity’s source code by President Erika Sloane (Angela Bassett), IMF agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) refuses. Instead, Ethan pursues criminal Gabriel (Esai Morales) who seeks to control the Entity after it cast him aside. However, time is not on Ethan’s side as the Entity looks to unleash a nuclear holocaust. It’s up to Ethan and his intrepid band of IMF agents including Benji (Simon Pegg), Luther (Ving Rhames), Grace (Hayley Atwell), and Paris (Pom Klementieff) to stop the Entity and prevent Armageddon.

Review: It’s been a long road for the Mission: Impossible franchise. When I saw Brian De Palma’s original spy action thriller as a junior in highschool, I had no inkling the series would continue on for nearly three decades. Seventeen year old me would have thought the idea of Tom Cruise being a 62 year old action star laughable. Yet here I am a 46 year old man with more than a little white in his beard watching our last movie star dangle hundreds of feet in the air on a biplane. Like William Goldman used to say about Hollywood, “Nobody knows anything.”

Although Cruise rose to fame with Top Gun, up until the mid-2000s he always took the opportunity to explore “serious” roles like Born on the Fourth of July and Magnolia. Since about 2005 however, it seems like Cruise has been interested mostly in making popcorn films, with the Mission: Impossible films his particular brand of buttered maize. Much like the Bond franchise, the Mission: Impossible films have varied in quality but remained consistently entertaining. Yet with The Final Reckoning likely the last iteration in the franchise, how does it stack up against its predecessors?

Well, much like the elaborate plot of the movie, the answer is complex.

The first hour of Mission: Impossible -The Final Reckoning is honestly a bit of a slog. Whereas previous Mission: Impossible films have started out with bang and then built momentum from there, The Final Reckoning feels more like a sputtering spark struggling to catch fire. It is incredibly verbose and director Christopher McQuarrie (who co-wrote the film) and Cruise concern themselves with a stilted recap of the previous editions’ highlights. It’s exposition heavy to a fault, yet still somehow fails to clearly explain the convoluted goobledygook of a plot.

I’m astonished that McQuarrie, the Oscar winning screenwriter of The Usual Suspects, wrote this script. The screenplay unfortunately lends to the bloated nature of the film, with the movie at least 20 minutes too long. Plot points that strain credulity and rely on coincidence (even for a Mission: Impossible film) I can only contribute to the hubris of both Cruise and McQuarrie. At least two characters in this film are related to characters from the very first movie which made my eyes roll so badly, I thought they might pop out of my skull. Everything strains the bonds of verisimilitude.

And you know what? After that first hour I didn’t care one bit about anything I just wrote.

The Final Reckoning is everything you’ve come to expect from Cruise and McQuarrie. A rousing, explosion filled, practical stunt extravaganza that after that first hour grabs you by the neck and refuses to let go. The charisma and star power of Tom Cruise, his chemistry with his team, and his commitment to the authenticity of his stunts, completely overwhelms any quibbles I’ve pointed out. The stunt where Ethan recovers the Podkova module (the Entity’s source code) is worth the price of admission alone. It’s a twenty minute sequence in the middle of the film that’s dialogue free. However, the practical nature of the scene coupled with some truly brilliant work from cinematographer Fraser Taggart makes this a sight to see. I caught myself holding my breath which is something that rarely happens to me during a film.

The deep sea dive is one of the two major set pieces of the movie, the other being the biplane sequence seen in the trailers and TV spots. I wasn’t sure how it would play out on the screen as I wasn’t particularly impressed with what I saw. However, I couldn’t have been more wrong. Gabriel and Ethan’s interaction hundreds of feet about the ground at speeds of 120 miles an hour, was tantamount to an aerial sword fight. It feels like I’ve written this before but I don’t know how they did this and I don’t know how Tom Cruise isn’t dead. The insurance brokers who underwrite Cruise’s films must just mainline Pepto Bismol. The biplane sequence is a stunning capstone to The Final Reckoning.

As high octane and impressive as the action sequences are, The Final Reckoning also possesses a commensurate amount of heart. There’s some devastatingly heartfelt sequences throughout. A scene between Luther (Ving Rhames) and Ethan had me tearing up. It’s the summation of a thirty year relationship dynamic. It also underscores an extra layer of humanity to Cruise’s Ethan Hunt that we’ve rarely seen. Simon Pegg’s Benji (who I’ve always felt has been the most underrated character in this franchise) also finally gets his time to shine in the climactic act. It’s an impressive piece of editing from Eddie Hamilton as we cut between Ethan’s biplane battle with Gabriel, and the rest of Ethan’s crew trying to defeat the Entity while Benji deals with a potentially fatal wound. I’d dare say that one of the lesson’s of The Final Reckoning is Ethan accepting that he can’t do everything on his own and ultimately trusting his team to succeed. This particularly plays out with Hayley Atwell’s Grace, whose role is much more expanded than Dead Reckoning.

Additionally, fans of the franchise know from the trailers and character posters that actor Rolf Saxon reprises his role as CIA analyst William Donloe from the first film. Let me just say that his role is much more than a cameo and is integral and consequential to the plot of the film. I was delighted to observe how vital he was to the outcome of The Final Reckoning. Also Lucy Tulugarjuk is a hoot as Tapessa, Donloe’s Inuit wife.

While Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning sometimes buckles under the weight of its own bloated aspirations (and Cruise’s ego), it’s nevertheless a rollicking good time at the movies.

You should definitely choose to accept.

My rating system:

1 God Awful Blind Yourself With Acid Bad

2 Straight Garbage

3 Bad

4 Sub Par

5 Average

6 Ok

7 Good

8 Great

9 Excellent

10 A Must See