Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning

With the world's nuclear powers all tensing as The Entity, the truth-eating, divisive digital parasite intent on annihilating humankind, begins taking over their warheads as it breaches their security one by one, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) rejects U.S. President Erika Sloane's (Angela Bassett) plea to turn himself in with the device's cruciform key and begs her to trust him one more time in "Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning."

Laura's Review: B-

The eighth and supposedly final entry in the series noted for the escalating stunts Tom Cruise attempts to top himself with pulls strands and players from previous outings, cowriter (with Erik Jendresen of "Dead Reckoning, Part One")/director Christopher McQuarrie (the last three "MI" films) suggesting there was a master plan all along, even backtracking to a previous entry to let us know Hunt's own actions caused The Entity to exist in the first place. But as exciting as "Dead Reckoning - Part One" was, this final chapter is something of a letdown, pushing the impossibility of the mission to such extremes over and over that the whole thing becomes preposterous, rendered with a solemnity unrelieved by humor and exacerbated by Max Aruj and Alfie Godfrey's score which blares the movie's impending doom at every turn. Ethan Hunt is practically declared a saint, a superhero who has sacrificed everything for 'those he will never meet.' This all becomes a bit much.

That said, for those who have followed the series, "The Final Reckoning" is still worth watching, characters old and new adding flavor. The film begins by revisiting the past, montages touching upon those lost, like Hunt's wife (Michelle Monaghan), hidden by a fake death for her own safety, or another of Hunt's loves, MI6 agent Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson), who was really killed on duty. Tipping its hat to the television series created by Bruce Geller, we'll get some requisite mask removals, before Hunt interacts directly with The Entity, Paris (Pom Klementieff) warning 'It will change you' (it apparently doesn't nor does the interaction really affect the plot). The early loss of a team member features some moving speechifying, undermined by the fact that the clock is counting down to a potential nuclear blast throughout. "The Final Reckoning" is riddled with stuff like this.

Hunt puts Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg) in charge of a team comprised of Paris, Degas (Greg Tarzan Davis) and Grace (Hayley Atwell). They're to find the coordinates of the sunken Russian submarine Sevastopol, which Hunt believes holds The Entity's original code, while he makes his way to the Arctic, first aboard Admiral Neely's (Hannah Waddingham) aircraft carrier, then Captain Bledsoe's (a wry Tramell Tillman, TV's 'Severance') super secret sub, all requiring pinpoint timing against incredible odds. Oh, and the Soviets are on both Neely and Bledsoe's tails and Eugene Kittridge (Henry Czerny) and Jasper Briggs (Shea Whigham) are waiting in the wings to gum up the works.

While Hunt's entire underwater escapade getting into and out of the Sevastopol defies biological belief (and omits a major part of his rescue), Tom Cruise really does wing walk on two biplanes in G-Force conditions, his final face-off with a cartoonishly mugging Gabriel (Esai Morales). But while this stunt is reportedly the most dangerous he's undertaken, it doesn't offer the same visceral thrill of that motorcycle jump off a mountain cliff in the previous entry. At sixty-two, Cruise, while clearly in great physical shape, is finally beginning to look his age, something he and McQuarrie deny here with extra dollops of those signature limb-pumping runs.

There are even more elements to the climax, involving Grace's pickpocketing skills timed to 'the blink of an eye' and President Sloane's faith in Hunt and her own moral convictions being tested under the worst of pressure cooker conditions (she is in a command center with Nick Offerman's General Sydney, Holt McCallany's Secretary of Defense Bernstein and Janet McTeer's Walters among others). The film's best character callback, though, is the original film's C.I.A. analyst William Donloe (Rolf Saxon) and his Inuit wife Tapeesa (Lucy Tulugarjuk), the former now integral to the plot and given a satisfying back story, the latter providing the film's only concession to playfulness conveyed by her sparkling eyes.

Is this really "The Final Reckoning?" In Cannes, Cruise danced around the question and this film's final, underwhelming scene set in Tralfalgar Square could be interpretted either way. I guess it all depends on whether Cruise will be allowed a space walk or moon landing to justify another.

Paramount Pictures releases "Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning" in theaters on 5/23/25.