'Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning' Review: Ethan Hunt’s Curtain Call Boasts its own Sprint to the Finish Line
Since 1996, IMF head Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his ever-changing roster of spies have consistently maintained an air of sophistication (though the quality of movies may vary). But once Christopher McQuarrie accepted the mission of carrying the series with 2015's Rogue Nation and onward, the series hit a new winning streak of blockbuster excellence. All that leads to the eighth and final entry, fittingly titled Final Reckoning. As Hunt reaches the end of his journey, he fumbles in the last few yards when McQuarrie makes an upsetting turn towards franchise self-glorification. The impact of this bittersweet grand finale is diminished by what could have been a wonderful bookend to one of the greatest action franchises in film history.
Image copyright (©) Courtesy of Paramount Pictures
MPA Rating: PG13 (sequences of strong violence and action, bloody images, and brief language.)
Runtime: 2 Hours and 49 Minutes
Production Companies: Paramount Pictures, Skydance Media, TC Productions
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Director: Christopher McQuarrie
Writers: Christopher McQuarrie, Erik Jendresen
Cast: Tom Cruise, Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Esai Morales, Henry Czerny, Angela Bassett, Katy O'Brian, Rolf Saxon, Charles Parnell, Greg Tarzan Davis, Shea Whigham, Tramell Tillman, Janet McTeer, Hannah Waddingham
Release Date: May 23, 2025
Two months after the events of Dead Reckoning, Ethan Hunt and the IMF team — Grace (Hayley Atwell), Benji (Simon Pegg), and Luther (Ving Rhames) — continue to seek out the evil AI, the Entity. Yet as fate would have it, Hunt's adversary Gabriel (Esai Morales) captures Ethan and Grace and forces them to retrieve a device from a sunken ship in an unknown location under the Antarctic Ocean that contains source code to the Entity. Once freed, they enlist the assistance of Dead Reckoning’s supporting players: US agent Theo (Greg Tarzan Davis) and the lethal French assassin foe-turned-friend Paris (Pom Klementieff). At the same time, the Entity has acquired nuclear weapons from every nation on the planet and plans to launch them all in three days, causing total human eradication. With a ticking clock, tense nations, and foes hot on their tail, Hunt and co. must pull off their most impossible mission yet and save the world.
Final Reckoning's mission is exceedingly convoluted and incomprehensible
Let's be honest, logic isn't Mission Impossible’s strongest suit. Nevertheless, a significant number of them, particularly those from the McQuarrie era, consistently made Ethan Hunt's global adventures accessible and plausible. Final Reckoning frustratingly goes for broke on sheer bloat with its $400 million price tag. The writers, Christopher McQuarrie and Erik Jendresen, overemphasize the unstoppable threat posed by the Entity and the mustache-twirling Gabriel. As a result, the stakes are elevated to a level that is reminiscent of a superhero film, while the IMF team's objective is as brainless as any Fast & Furious one: Hunt must use the macguffin cruciform key from Dead Reckoning to retrieve the Entity's source code from a sunken submarine and rely on team leader Benji (the bestest boy) to obtain the coordinates of the sub's location, bring a compression chamber, and retrieve him from under an ice bed at exactly the right time and location. If you think that's silly enough, that battle against time also extends itself to another implausible objective: grabbing a drive in the span of a millisecond. I get it's taking its title to heart, but it exceeds plausibility and tests its audience's patience with an excruciatingly drawn-out first hour (out of 2 hours and 49 minutes) full of reiterating already established exposition and bizarre, agonizing boasting.
McQuarrie Frustratingly Veers into Rise of Skywalker Territory
Mission Impossible is light years past its JJ Abrams-affiliated days. Yet for someone who has stated on a podcast in 2023 that “Fan service, and fandom, is poison,” McQuarrie plunges into the shallow end of the pool of fan service in his Mission Impossible Episode VIII in the style of Star Wars Episode IX. Anyone who has ever seen a Mission: Impossible movie knows that its longevity lies in its episodic nature—each installment feels self-contained, yet still congruent with the events of its predecessors. But Final Reckoning's first hour is unwatchable, full of Rise of Skywalker-level retconning. Self-congratulating its legacy to masturbatory degrees, McQuarrie and Jendresen's script adheres to the exhausting, creatively-bankrupt Hollywood franchise norm of emphasizing nostalgia, as if this one long-spanning series was a revival after ten years without a new entry. For instance, it forces a clip show of "greatest hits scenes" into a scene with several government officials (played by Nick Offerman, Henry Czeny, Janet McTeer, and Charles Parnell), as if Paramount executives wanted to get people to rewatch the previous installments on Paramount+.
It's constantly bending over backwards to tie narrative elements to events from Mission Impossible I, III, VI, and VII to the point of winding up, up its own rear end. Remember William Donahue (Rolf Saxon), the guy who missed Ethan in the CIA vault from the first movie? Remember Erika Sloane (Angela Bassett) from Fallout? She's president. Oh, remember this [redacted] character? He's a relative of one of Ethan’s foes. Remember when the integrity of this series lay in its self-contained storytelling? Nah, me neither. Conform to nostalgia!
All these factors reinforce the idea that everything Hunt has accomplished in three decades 'led to this moment.' Every character he interacts with finds some flimsy way to reiterate why Hunt — mostly just Hunt, less about his team, just Hunt — is the only one to save the world from the Entity. Beyond Cruise's insistence on dare deviling in every entry and him and McQuarrie building plots around said stunts, Ethan's humanity and morality to protect good people and his team from the system is why he's such a great protagonist.
There's an attempt to emphasize the good of humanity throughout the mission, particularly when the story leads Ethan to US military vessels, each helmed by an Apple TV+ show alum — Hannah Waddingham plays a rear admiral, and Tramell Tillman plays a commander of a rescue submarine who greets Hunt as "mister" with a sweet sincerity. The purpose of this is to illustrate that each individual is involved in the protection of humanity in a growing threat of AI. The good intentions are present, but misses the mark when many of the supporting players treat Hunt as the chosen one, if not God. At the same time, it puts down characters we've grown to love in other movies. Pegg as Benji, Rhames as Luther, and Klementieff as Paris all deserved a lot more screen time.
Final Reckoning Finally Becomes Fun When It Eats its Snickers
If you enter Final Reckoning at its midpoint, preferably when Hunt first encounters the rescue submarine, you will have an absolute blast. It's as if by that point, McQuarrie takes a Snickers and finally delivers a thrilling final half; worthy of being a proper Mission Impossible movie and an emotionally resonant wrap-up. At the halfway point, Final Reckoning focuses on its practical, outrageous set pieces, which, even for a scene where Hunt almost drowns in subfreezing temperatures, function as a scaled-down version of a Rogue Nation set piece while remaining respectably artistic and technically accomplished.
In contrast, Final Reckoning's climax, involving Hunt going from one plane to another, is a miraculous, thrilling finale reminiscent of Wallace & Gromit, where Gabriel is Feathers McGraw and Ethan is Gromit. Eddie Hamilton, a regular collaborator of McQuarrie's, masters at cutting between the team's ground mission and Ethan's in-air goal, creating a tension-filled sequence that keeps you on the edge of your seat. Similar to those Aardman masterpieces, you are captivated by the grand scale of production and craftsmanship, as well as the tense silence. This finale saw Hunt surpass Gromit, channeling breakneck animated action in real life and cementing his status as one of the greatest action stars in film. All at the age of 62. You love to see it.
Final Statement
Though it marks an uncomfortable turn into inflated self-importance, Mission Impossible: Final Reckoning eventually lights the fuse towards a satisfying endgame. Although it is one of the weakest entries to date, the action spectacle and underlying charm render Ethan Hunt's "seemingly" grand finale a worthwhile mission to accept.
