REVIEW – “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning”

Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt embarks on his last mission: an epic high-flying, bomb-diffusing, sweaty-palmed, down-to-the-wire adventure that connects 30 years of impossible missions into one Final Reckoning.

At once dense, dynamic, expansive and exhilarating, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning follows our beloved IMF team in a race against time as they travel the globe to stop an apocalyptic AI nightmare known as The Entity from taking control of the world’s nuclear arsenal and annihilating the human race. Following the events of the now mistitled Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, the all-seeing, all-knowing, Godlike Entity is using AI manipulation to divide the world into opposing factions by offering humanity two choices: an enslaved world or a destroyed one. True believers who want to submit and let The Entity win have infiltrated our government believing that resistance is futile and its victory is predetermined.

The only thing standing in between the future of the human race and global extinction is Ethan Hunt and his team. Ethan’s loyal ally since the very beginning, Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames) has engineered a poison pill that can defeat The Entity. However, it must be inserted into The Entity’s original source code which is housed in a server device called the Podkova located inside a sunken submarine at the bottom of the Bering Sea. Standing in the team’s way are villain Gabriel’s (Esai Morales) death traps and Agents Kittridge (Henry Czerny) and Briggs (Shea Whigham), who are hot on Ethan’s trail.

While Ethan pleads his case to President Erika Sloane (Angela Bassett) and her cabinet to trust him one last time, Benji (Simon Pegg), Grace (Hayley Atwell) and the rest of the new IMF team are tasked with finding the coordinates of the sunken submarine and rendezvousing with Ethan at the exact unknown time that he emerges from the icy depths of the ocean with the retrieved Podkova before he dies from the bends and exposure.

The impossibility of such a mission that relies solely on coincidence and luck starts to strain believability as does Ethan’s ability to overcome any obstacle to be the savior of the human race. Such Christ-like imagery begins drifting this film toward vanity project territory, reminding me of the increasingly absurd superhuman abilities of the street-level characters in the Fast and Furious movies.

However, the character of Ethan Hunt has proven, time and again, that he truly is that capable and selfless, and Cruise has earned enough goodwill that audiences will accept each improbable mission alongside him. Because he is actually doing these stunts. That is really him diving into icy waters in his underwear and hanging off planes flying dangerously low to the ground. Vin Diesel could never.

Unfortunately, the team is split for the first half of the film, which often becomes convoluted and weighed down by heavy exposition that feels the need to summarize the events of the past seven Mission: Impossible films. Which may be necessary if you haven’t just binge watched the entire series going into the final film. Indeed, the ghosts of the first Mission: Impossible still linger over Ethan Hunt. There are many Easter eggs and callbacks to the first movie, so it helps to have done your homework, but isn’t necessary because the opening of Final Reckoning features its own “Previously on Mission: Impossible” sizzle reel of Ethan’s greatest hits.

The best callback I did not see coming is the redemption of the first film’s minor character, William Donloe played by Rolf Saxon. His CIA black box analyst was duped by Ethan’s team nearly 30 years ago, given diarrhea, and exiled from Langley to an Alaskan outpost. It’s a welcome return and he becomes an integral part of the team during the film’s final act.

With the fate of the human race at stake, former adversaries become allies such as the ruthless Paris (Pom Klementieff) and Agent Degas (Greg Tarzan Davis). The film also features brief-but-memorable turns by Apple TV+ scene-stealers Hannah Waddingham (Ted Lasso) and Trammell Tillman (Severance). Final Reckoning also includes the most ridiculously hilarious, laugh-out-loud, and shocking onscreen villain death of any Mission: Impossible film.

While the original IMF team is greying and showing their age, there is no reason why this should be their last mission. Yes, they’ve saved the world numerous times and with this film’s end-of-the-world mission, it’s hard to think of where the franchise can go next. There were reports that Tom Cruise would ultimately take the action into outer space by filming a scene at the International Space Station, however, it never materialized. Director Christopher McQuarrie shot the idea down, stating that they rely too much on gravity to pull off the film’s most outrageous stunts. And outrageous they are: taking Ethan from the bottom of the ocean to atop the clouds in the sky.

However, this franchise can absolutely continue without Ethan Hunt. Jeremy Renner’s character William Brandt was supposed to take over the franchise from Tom Cruise after Ghost Protocol. And while the filmmakers had planned to kill off his character in Fallout, Renner has still expressed interest in returning as Brandt. There are also other former IMF team members that could return to form another team. Paula Patton, Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Maggie Q’s characters are all still alive out there and can join together under Brandt to accept future missions.

With Cruise steering the ship, the Mission: Impossible series has been a towering achievement for the mediums of filmmaking and stunt work that have mostly improved with each installment. While many scenes in Final Reckoning seem to mirror the best parts of series-highpoint Fallout, the film provides a satisfying ending to Hunt’s story. Perhaps Cruise is simply ready to move on and make more Top Guns, but I don’t see him slowing down or permanently putting his Hunt character to rest. He’s the world’s biggest movie star and possibly its last. A cinematic daredevil who puts his life on the line for our entertainment, he is a champion of cinema and for seeing films in movie theaters on the biggest screen possible. Whatever his next mission is, he’ll make it possible. 4/5

Rated PG-13 with a running time of 2 hours, 51 minutes, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning opens only in theatres, Dolby Cinema, 4DX, ScreenX, Premium Large Formats, and IMAX on May 23, 2025.