Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning Review

Overlong, overcomplicated, but never really over, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning sees the franchise fuse burn out with a whimper.

Any plotting in these films was an excuse for Cruise’s Ethan Hunt to get into increasingly ridiculous situations and stunts, cheered on by the finest team assembled by the IMF (Sad to say Christine La Garde does not make a cameo). Alas, that simplicity of concept is now gone, replaced by the modern franchise urge to tie everything together, no matter how nonsensical. The convolution and self-importance of The Final Reckoning means the audience’s mission might not be pulled off this time.

The most impossible thing about this final mission is figuring out why it even exists in the form it does. The seven films up to this point vary in length, director, even tone. Tom Cruise and the franchise name are the only things to remind you that John Woo’s M:I 2 followed Brian De Palma’s Mission: Impossible. That eccentricity in the individual approaches to each film kept the franchise interesting, and it gave Ethan Hunt something in common with his close comparison, James Bond.

Much like that franchise under Daniel Craig, M:I has found itself in a bit of a rut. By the time Craig’s stint as Bond ended with No Time To Die, the franchise was digging into lore and creating links between the films that had no business being there. Alas, at eight films in, and with a visibly aging star looking to wrap things up in a way to appeal to the masses, Mission: Impossible has gone the same way. 

As in the Marvel Universe before it, every loose end must be tied off, and every sidebar explained. Characters here reveal themselves to be related to others from previous installments, but never for any good reason. The botched emotionality that comes when a major character actually dies in these things shows that such sentiment isn’t needed. We’re here to watch things blow up and Tom Cruise kicking butt; the formula needn’t be complicated. Christopher McQuarrie is a solid workhorse director, but the writer of The Usual Suspects may have lost his knack for a surprising twist or two.

Co-written with Erik Jendresen once again, Mission: Impossible 8 has less to do with stopping Esai Morales’ Gabriel from assuming control of the sentient AI known as The Entity than it does with wrapping up everything about these movies in a tidy little bow. There is little other reason than recalling De Palma’s film for Rolf Saxon to reprise his role as Donloe, the CIA operative Hunt duped with his antics while iconically suspended from the ceiling. Once, he was just a cog in the machine; now, he gets to be a hero.

From its title to its persistent threat of total nuclear annihilation, the message from The Final Reckoning is: This. Is. It. Mind you, it’s hard to wrap your head around the threat when it doesn’t even have a face. The Entity was unleashed on the world at the end of Dead Reckoning, and has now caused so much paranoia to spread that even a doomsday cult has sprung up around it. This less-than-subtle attempt at commentary doesn’t change the fact that Grok cosplaying as Skynet is not as enjoyable a bad guy as a respected actor swanning in and chewing scenery.

Morales gets plenty of times to show off the pearly whites in his nefarious grin, but the franchise has had stronger villains. We’re reminded of this via flashback to M:I III, when the late lamented Philip Seymour Hoffman got to make Hollywood’s biggest star cower before him. Now, the villain is just a pawn in a game being played by ChatGPT’s steroided sibling. There’s an attempt to engage with concerns around the perniciousness of AI, but it sits uncomfortably with the giddy action that is being held up by explaining everything the film is trying to shove into its generous runtime.

The explanations come from a raft of faces old and new, scarcely any of which get enough to do here. The returning IMF team of Grace (Hayley Atwell), Benji (Simon Pegg) and Paris (Pom Klementieff) play their part in the denouement, but until then they’re relegated to the sidelines as Hunt jets off to a borrowed aircraft carrier(!) and a nuclear submarine(!!) to track down the Entity. These ungainly vehicles are on loan from U.S. President Sloane (Angela Bassett), whose cabinet meetings keep getting intercut with the main action.

The cabinet is populated by the overqualified likes of Holt McCallany, Janet McTeer and Nick Offerman, and much like the IMF team, they haven’t enough to do. The Final Reckoning’s price tag is somewhere between $300 and $400 million; you can’t help but think they wouldd have saved a few bob if every character with just three lines dialogue hadn’t been played by an Oscar nominee or TV fan favourite. These have to be the easiest paycheques Hannah Waddingham and Tramell Tillman have made yet.

The Final Reckoning starts off where Dead Reckoning left off, with IMF in London to get an antidote to the Entity from Luther (Franchise stalwart Ving Rhames). Of course, Gabriel gets there first, and thus begins a series of prolonged jaunts from the U.K. to the U.S. to the Pacific to the Arctic, but all of these lack any urgency as all the oxygen is taken up by everyone talking to move the plot along. Apparently, the code Maguffin from Mission: Impossible III could be used to take the AI down, but doing so could take the whole world offline permanently, and jeopardy builds on jeopardy until you remember that all these impossible missions never fail, and you feel a bit silly for getting angsty about all this nonsense.

It’s only around the halfway mark, after Hunt, his team and their collaborators get separated and have to synchronize their actions from across the globe, that pulses ever threaten to rise. A sequence with Hunt scouring a sunken Russian submarine for the AI’s source code is handily the high point of The Final Reckoning. As the sub rolls towards an underwater cliff, Hunt and the sub’s torpedoes are slung about like clothes on a 40-degree wash. Similarly exciting is the finale, with Hunt hanging off the wings of a biplane.

Cruise and the stunt are impressive, but seeing this next to impending nuclear strikes and characters performing DIY surgery on injured comrades underlines how far off the map this franchise has gone. It’s increased its scale without admitting to its own silliness. Mission: Impossible 2 recognized its own campiness 25 years ago, but now every franchise can’t resist insisting on how important it is. A little of that John Woo slo-mo cool would have done The Final Reckoning a world of good.

Many of these characters have been here for multiple installments, and it’s a sad fact that the likes of Pegg, Rhames and even Cruise are showing their age. In a purely matter-of-fact way, it’s a sign this franchise should have ended sooner. With Top Gun: Maverick, Cruise passed the baton on to younger stars, but Misson: Impossible – The Final Reckoning sees him holding on to his best-known franchise with both hands to the death. It’s time to let go, Tom.

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on May 14, 2025. The movie will be released in UK & Irish cinemas on May 21, 2025, in US theatres on May 23, and globally in theaters in May. Read our ranking of all Mission: Impossible Movies!