'Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning' Review

Tom Cruise wants to die making a movie.

The above subheading is not just this writer’s opinion.

Once you see the latest Mission: Impossible, you can only accept it as fact. The man nearly drowns. He hangs off a biplane as it twirls through the air, a literal ragdoll being tossed from left to right in ways no human body should be able to endure (certainly not once, and certainly not the most likely dozens of times he did it to get these shots). What’s scariest of all? It’s not watching it happen with your own eyes. It’s accepting he enjoys doing this. God bless him.

Thankfully for all of us, Cruise didn’t die making this, giving us his grand finale, the sum of all his choices: Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning (will it be final? It’s Cruise. We shouldn’t believe it till he’s in the ground.) The eighth installment in the nearly 30-year franchise, Final Reckoning is the fourth directed by Cruise’s favorite collaborator, Christopher McQuarrie, and, if reports are to be believed, one of the most expensive movies ever made.

Multiple strikes, delays, you name it were thrown at the movie during its production. The fact that it works at all is a minor miracle. I have praise to throw upon my favorite movie star’s latest effort, and yet, I must be honest: not everything works here. What exactly was the plot? Not sure! It’s a point that could be made about other entries in the franchise, to be fair. The choice to write these movies as they go - something that has been a staple for most of its run - gives the movies their relentless energy and creativity. It also can result in knotty plots, of which this might be the knottiest.

This is Mission: Impossible at its most biblical. Here, Cruise’s Ethan Hunt is literally battling an anti-God: a rogue AI bent on world domination, along with its fallen messenger, Gabriel. The only hope? A cruciform key. All of that, great. Why the movie feels the need to spend its first act holding the audience’s hand with montage after montage, flashback after flashback, and exposition dump after exposition dump, though, is downright baffling, all in a way that feels wildly out of step with the franchise’s usual lean, propulsive storytelling.

If this all sounds familiar, it’s because I wrote very similar things just two years ago. When Dead Reckoning was released in 2023, I theorized then that that film’s exposition-heavy opening act was in order to make the finale that much more efficient and breathless. Unfortunately, a take that did not age well. So, who’s to blame for this one repeating the same sins? Was it studio notes after Dead Reckoning underperformed at the box office? Was it the Writer’s Strike? Whatever the reason, that opening stretch begins to strain the goodwill and trust the franchise has earned over and over again since 1996. It’s a deep flaw, one that runs against the very story instincts that Cruise and McQuarrie have championed for years, and an unfortunate misstep after the franchise had been operating at such a high since 2012’s Ghost Protocol.

That all being said, I come here not to bury The Final Reckoning, but to praise it. Thankfully, thankfully, the team eventually right the ship with, literally, a ship. From there, the film becomes what it was working so hard to be all along: the most spectacular, tense, and “holy cow they’re actually doing this” filmmaking the series has seen since 2018’s Fallout (and possibly ever?). It’s no spoiler to say the film features a submarine sequence that would rival any sequence in any other blockbuster….if the biplane sequence splashed across every poster for the film didn’t follow just a short while later. Jaw-dropping is an understatement in this stretch. And heart rates? Mine was spiking like I was in the closing stretch of a marathon. Chances are, yours will be too.

The performances all around are strong, per usual, if minor characters also feel underserved here. Severance’s Tramell Tillmann is a particular standout as a submarine captain, with other great character actors (Nick Offerman! Henry Czerny! Holt McCallany!) making even the most convoluted exposition sing. The cinematography is stronger here than it was just a few years ago with Dead Reckoning (the first film in the franchise to eschew film for digital, notably), and McQuarrie gives the whole proceedings an apocalyptic tone that elevates the stakes considerably (though your mileage may vary on if this self-serious tone is what you want from a Mission movie).

If not for the first 45 minutes, this would maybe be a top 3 Mission movie. The other two hours of the movie, punctuated by these two sequences (along with Cruise kicking a man and telling him he spends too much time on the internet), truly are that good. McQuarrie and Cruise, in a constant battle to top themselves, actually pull it off in this stretch. It makes that first act all the more baffling and frustrating. And yet! The other two hours make it all worthwhile.

In a blockbuster landscape littered with cynical IP-mining, with corporate mandates, with nihilistic slop, Mission: Impossible dared to do something different: relentlessly try to entertain the masses with real stunt work, clever writing, and a constant desire to create real movie magic, with Cruise at the center of it all. Is it all a three-decade long ego trip? Maybe! But it’s also a film franchise that dared to say that it’s worth risking it all for your friends, and that love is the one thing that matters in this crazy universe.

When I think back on this film franchise in the years to come, sure, I’ll be thinking of Cruise on the side of the Burj Khalifa, falling off a helicopter, being flung around a biplane. But I’ll also be thinking of this one exchange from Dead Reckoning between Cruise’s Ethan and Hayley Atwell’s Grace.

Ethan: “Your life will always mean more to me than my own.”

Grace: “You don’t even know me.”

Ethan: “Why does that matter?”

Just great stuff, and a mission statement of what this franchise was all about, in the end. Not just stunts. About stunts in service of characters sacrificing for each other.

If this truly is the end, we, the moviegoing public, got to witness some of the most impressive blockbuster filmmaking we are ever going to get. Sure, this is not the franchise’s finest hour at times. McQuarrie and Cruise have made much tighter movies together, even just a few years ago.

But, in the end, Cruise pushed and pushed and pushed, all for us. He should be dead after all these movies. Buy a ticket as a thank you. You’re welcome in advance for the treat of those final two acts.