There’s a weight that loiters over The Final Reckoning, as it struggles mightily with the responsibility of finishing off a ridiculously successful film franchise that has lasted for three decades. Make no mistake, the Mission: Impossible films are the greatest action movie IP of my lifetime. Over time, the movies have become a referendum on their main star, Tom Cruise, and the stories usually succeed or fail based on how well they calibrate that comparison. Cruise’s Ethan Hunt is a thrill-seeking maverick (no pun intended) who’s clinically incapable of letting down the team. He seems predestined by fate for greatness, but also so much of his success comes from an improvisational, act-first-think-later approach that relies very little on reflection. As these films have progressed, they’ve really leaned into the “impossible”, and that’s personified by Cruise, whose predilection for death-defying stunts has come to define him.

Over eight movies, the scale has only gotten bigger. In the original film in 1996, a cocky, young Ethan is merely attempting to clear his name after being framed as a double agent. By 2025, he’s fighting to take down an all-mighty AI system that may trigger a nuclear holocaust. There’s always an evocatively named item that he must retrieve: a NOC List, a rabbit’s foot, a cruciform key. These always allude to a mood more than they represent anything real. There’s no interest in high-minded geopolitics. Hunt and the IMF lack any pretension for larger meaning. They’re given a mission that’s impossible to accomplish and it’s their job to make it possible. It’s a brilliant premise for a film franchise, evidenced by the enduring nature of the subsequent movies. If The Final Reckoning fumbles its finale it’s because it abandons the series’ own foundation and searches for that meaning it was never interested in before.

Originally slated as the second half of 2023’s Dead Reckoning (the two films were shot back to back), The Final Reckoning continues Ethan’s quest to take down the Entity. Our human villain, Gabriel (Esai Morales), was formerly a liaison to the AI monster, but is now plotting ways to control it, and thus control the world. Ethan wants to stop Gabriel, but he mostly wants to prevent the Entity from bringing on an apocalypse. His longest tenured crew member, Luther (Ving Rhames), has created a poison pill that can bring down the Entity, but in order to pull it off, he must travel down to the sunken Russian submarine that let loose the Entity to begin with. With the help of Grace (Hayley Atwell), Benji (Simon Pegg), and newcomers Paris (Pom Klementieff) and Theo (Greg Tarzan Davis), Ethan plans to travel down to the submarine, where he can upload the poison pill and hopefully bring down the Entity for good.

There’s obviously much more too it than that, but Final Reckoning spends so much time building and rebuilding various structures that there’s not too much point of getting into it here. I will say that in addition to Gabriel, Ethan also has to contend with the frustrations of CIA director (and former IMF head) Eugene Kittridge (Henry Czerny) and sitting US president (and former CIA head) Erika Sloane (Angela Bassett). In order to get to the submarine, Ethan first has to convince a Navy Admiral (Hannah Waddingham) to let him board an aircraft carrier, before working his charms on a naval submarine captain (Tramell Tillman) to help him get to the correct coordinates where the sunken submarine is hiding. There’s a lot of set-up for a large slew of characters played by great character actors. I haven’t even mentioned Shea Whigham, Janet McTeer, Charles Parnell, Nick Offerman, Holt McCallany, or Katy O’Brien.

I’d love to say that Final Reckoning finds the right balance for all these stories and all these characters, but that’s not always the case. What started as a franchise defined by its revolving door of directors, Christopher McQuarrie has been the sole filmmaker on Mission: Impossible since 2015’s Rogue Nation. McQuarrie is an Oscar-winning screenwriter, whose directorial efforts feel exclusively attached to his relationship with Cruise, and the partnership has been mutually beneficial. The McQuarrie films have always had a shaggy quality. They tend to feel overwritten in moments and lean into sentimentality. That brew was perfect for Fallout, the 2018 installment that is the best in the entire franchise. Final Reckoning feels very burdened by that sentimentality, especially as it takes on the title of the last Mission: Impossible movie.

But M:I has always been, first and foremost, about Cruise, the maniacally committed actor who’s spent the last fifteen years almost exclusively pushing the limits of action movie stunts. Long gone is the 90’s era of Cruise where films like Jerry Maguire and Eyes Wide Shut expressed interest in auteur-driven cinema. Top Gun: Maverick reestablished his movie star bonafides in 2022, but Ethan Hunt has always been his best, most consistent action character. The Ethan Hunt savior complex riddled throughout the M:I films plays right into the actor’s ego – an iconoclastic figure who fronts as the one man who has the answer to all the world’s problems. Christened the “savior of movies” after Maverick boosted the post-COVID box office, Cruise has no problem playing a character who seems to answer to no one but himself, the wisest man of all.

The plane stunt that has been littered within all the film’s trailers and TV spots is still a stunning thing to behold. As is a nail-biting sequence where Ethan must traverse the sunken Russian submarine. On their own, these set pieces are as exhilarating as anything that we’ve seen in these movies. The tension spans from the action itself, not the story that surrounds it. If anything, it overcomes the layers of intrigue that McQuarrie and co-writer Erik Jendresen foist upon it. Much has already been made of the “messiness” of Final Reckoning. I’d describe it more as silly than messy, but I recognize that for many that’s a distinction without a difference. Final Reckoning works well in that you get what you paid for, but it does fall short of the expectation that comes with being the greatest action franchise of its generation. What has always set Mission: Impossible apart from the MCU or the Fast and Furious films is a cinematic point of view, but this one feels disappointingly anonymous.

I think any lifelong M:I fans (like myself) will have their good time here, but it’s obvious that more time was spent on constructing the set pieces than building a compelling story. In lack of that, they fill the gaps with nostalgia plays and cameos from very famous television actors. Morales is put an unenviable position. In a movie where the main bad guy is an omniscient AI, Final Reckoning still needs a flesh and blood person to fight. Morales tries to fill those shoes but never really overcomes the futility of the character’s existence. I didn’t need this movie to be a masterpiece, though that obviously would have been nice. I don’t think it’s settling to enjoy this film on its own merits, even while recognizing that a lot of the cogs don’t fit properly. This isn’t a perfect summation of these films, and with the whirling nature of the series, that may not have been possible. But Tom Cruise promised us a good time at the movies, and he nearly gets you there.

 

Directed by Christopher McQuarrie