Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning (2025) – Review

Ever since he pulled off his first rubber mask way back in 1996, Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt has been on a breathless mission; but while the endlessly inventive super spy has been involved in countless scrapes in order to save the world, his near super human alter ego has been striving to save cinema itself by going above and beyond the call of duty to perform an array of mind boggling stunts himself. The result has been virtually revolutionary with an action franchise that’s impressively bucked the trend of the law of diminishing returns to go from strength to strength as it both embodied and disproved the “Impossible” part of its title in many different ways.
Well, apparently we’re now at the end of the road as Hunt, Cruise and director Christopher McQuarrie (who’s been shepherding the series since the fifth installment) are rapidly approaching the end of the line. But with a super-complex plot already in motion (at one point the film was titled Dead Reckoning – Part 2) and a need to somehow top the acts of daring do we’ve already seen without reducing its star to a mangled heap, will the final mission prove to achieve the improbable?

When last we laid eyes on Ethan Hunt and his assorted, harvested family of fellow IMF agents, they had scored a major victory against the malevolent, sentient, world swallowing AI known as the Entity and gotten their hands on the crusiform key that apparently can help shut down the problematic program once and for all. However, this is only a small fragment of the puzzle as the actual location of the source code that can halt a probable armageddon is going to be equally challenging to get to, especially with the Entity’s human agent, Gabriel, itching to even up past scores with Ethan. However, in the time passed, the status quo has shifted quite violently. For a start, the world now teters on a knife edge as the Entity seeks to gain control of every single nuclear weapon on earth and while the agressive AI and Gabriel may have been best buds before, the latter’s failures has now seen him ostracised and he now has set his sights upon bending the Entity to his will.
Enter Ethan Hunt who has been in hiding since laying claim to the crusiform key primarily because he knows that all the world leaders (especially his) will want to try and also control the sentient virus and he seemingly is the only one on earth who wants to kill it. Through a typically convoluted series of events, Hunt manages to figure out an audacious plan that will require the help of a few familiar faces and even some new ones that will see him go from taking his case directly to the President Of The United States, to dicking around in a wrecked submarine at the bottom of the ocean.
But while the mission may be impossible, Ethan’s ultimate choice might be even worse – let the Entity win and it’ll mold the world in its own image at nuclear gun point, but to kill it would also drag the world down into financial ruin. What’s a perpetually stressed super spy to do?

Whether the passage of time reveals that this is in fact the final mission, or somewhere down the line the IMF get a new global headache to unravel, the Mission: Impossible franchise has already punched its ticket to be classed as one of the greatest action franchises of all time. From the impressive slew of directors featured to Tom Cruise’s dedication to give his very body and soul to the dedication of blockbuster cinema, the series has delivered time and time again – but while The Final Reckoning certainly manages to deliver all the teeth grinding tension and extended set pieces we’ve come to expect over the years, there’s a feeling that McQuarrie and Cruise may have lost a little objectivity while entering the final lap.
For a start, weighing in just shy of a muscular three hours, to say that The Final Reckoning is a tad overindulgent is a bit of an understatement and worse yet, at no point does the film even approach the storytelling eloquence of the sixth film or the sheer fun of the fourth. Also, the movie is so obsessed about having Cruise literally begging everyone he meets to believe that he’s a totally great guy and is absolutely the only guy who can save the world that you can’t help but feel that old ego that radiated of the actor back in the 90s suddenly making an overexcited comeback. This sense is bolstered even more by the fact that Ethan doesn’t actually spend that much with his team, which is possibly the most jarring aspect considering the team aspect is one of the strongest parts of McQuarrie’s entries and while the separation does add to the tension that claws at your belly like a living thing, it’s also what you miss the most.

All of the above are problems, to be sure; but the magic of the franchise is that even if The Final Reckoning ranks somewhere around the third worst of the series, it still comes out as a fantastically intense action thriller that’s still fairly superior to other movies. The main plus points are unsurprisingly those Cruise testing action sequences with two in particular dangerously approaching the franchise’s best and brightest. The first is an audacious, lung popping, extended scene that sees Hunt trying to negotiate a sunken submarine at the bottom of the ocean that suddenly starts belly-rolling like an exuberant seal causing all the torpedos Ethan’s sharing a room with to start tumbling like socks in a washing machine. Elsewhere, the possibly deranged stunt team aggressively attempt to one-up the helicopter chase from the sixth film by having Hunt dangle from not one, but two consecutive bi-planes that give a near flawless argument for the purchase of an IMAX ticket alone.
Elsewhere, while Esai Morales’ returning Gabriel struggles slightly to be the end of game boss the franchise requires, long time fans of the series can enjoy some super deep cuts that manage to rope all eight movies together far better than Spectre managed to do with its previous Bond escapades. Yes, anyone who hasn’t brushed up on their IMF lore will no doubt be befuddled and may wish to knock a star off the review, but revelations that provide direct links to part 3’s Rabbit’s Foot maguffin and part 1’s Jim Phelps prove to add to the sheer epic nature of the piece. Yes, the film may desperately be lacking some laughs – even resident comic relief, Simon Pegg has his serious face on – and the influx of character actors (Hannah Waddingham, Holt McCallany, Nick Offerman, Tramell Tillmam, Katy O’Brian) manage to overshadow the new team somewhat; but for sheer, sustained, molar grinding, seat shuffling tension, there’s probably nothing else this year that will match how much it will make your muscles tense.

Noticably flawed, Ethan Hunt’s victory lap comes with a bit too much set up (over an hours worth) and a wealth of necessary homework required to get the best out of it. But even with these issue taken into account, Tom Cruise’s love letter to his own franchise still manages to bring what counts: convoluted spy shit and the actor risking it all to save cinema.
This (last?) mission may not be perfect – but I still choose to accept it.
🌟🌟🌟🌟