For nearly 30 years, the stunts and action sequences of Mission: Impossible have been synonymous with big-screen spectacle. And as expected, the franchise’s newest entry finds Tom Cruise’s alter ego Ethan Hunt risking life, limb, and the fates of millions, this time in pursuit of stopping The Entity, the evil A.I. introduced in 2023’s Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One. But the way the sequel plays out – which stopped being Dead Reckoning Part Two sometime in the last two years – it might be trying a little too hard to top the IMF’s greatest hits.
Absurdly astronomical stakes are one of the biggest issues with The Final Reckoning.
I know I keep swerving away from The Final Reckoning and back into the rest of the franchise but, for better and worse, this is a part eight that’s very aware that it’s a part eight. You can’t call a movie The Final Reckoning without delivering some degree of, well, finality, and oh boy does this one try.
It’s not merely planting Easter eggs from the earlier films so much as picking entire story points – largely unnecessary ones, I would argue. It’s a nice nod to the diehards, but when you consider the nearly three-hour run time and the relative lack of importance these moments have to the overall movie, I’m not sure what McQuarrie and Cruise were trying to accomplish. This is all to say, The Final Reckoning is impossible to review out of the context of the other seven Missions: Impossible, which is why I keep recapping my feelings for the franchise as a whole.
The action in The Final Reckoning is predictably excellent.
The fight choreography is also elevated from previous entries, as other countries send their most special forces after the same prize Ethan is after.
The fights are a little more brutal and legitimately feel like the IMF could lose. At this point in the franchise, that’s a difficult tightrope to walk, and McQuarrie and Cruise deserve a lot of credit for that.
Final Reckoning Screenshots
Maybe a messy and self-serious capstone is exactly what Mission: Impossible deserves.
For my part, because again, I’m a big fan of this kind of movie, I’m rooting for the latter. Threads have been picked up and tugged on in different directions throughout the course of these eight films.
That’s just the cost of doing business with a 30-year juggernaut of a franchise. Their mission now, should they choose to accept, is to take the clean slate they’ve created with all those threads tied up, however clumsily, and get back to what Mission: Impossible does best: not take itself so seriously.
They also deserve a fair bit of credit bringing the team together again.
I felt that was one part of the Mission: Impossible formula that was a little absent from the last film. The climax of The Final Reckoning gives every team member a job – it’s reminiscent of Fallout in that respect, and very important for the IMF. Because it’s less fun when Ethan is running around doing everything himself. An abiding trust in his team is part of Ethan’s allure – in addition to being, as Shea Whigham’s Jasper Briggs puts it in Dead Reckoning, a mind-reading, shape-shifting incarnation of chaos.
Final Verdict
While its action is reliably thrilling and a few of its most exciting sequences are sure to hold up through the years, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning tries to deal with no less than the end of every living thing on the planet – and suffers because of it. The somber tone and melodramatic dialogue miss the mark of what’s made this franchise so much fun for 30 years, but the door is left open for more impossible missions and the hope that this self-serious reckoning isn’t actually final.
Okay
The action thrills, but the soapy tone keeps greatness just out of reach for Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning.
