'Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning' is Pulse Pounding Action that Abandons 'Part I'

We’ve gotten to the “Final” in one of the (if not the) greatest secret agent action franchises of all time. The Mission: Impossible films have slowly morphed since their 1996 first instalment (and 1960s television show), this one being the pinnacle of a breathless stunt parade that’s at least more fun to watch than the last.

Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is still in the midst of shutting down “The Entity,” an endlessly powerful AI that’s been fooling the world with misinformation, leading to unrest and the rise of a group that believes in the eradication of the human race. Though he’s collected a career’s worth of rogue missions, Hunt has the unwavering trust of the former director of the CIA and now President of the United States, Erika Sloane (Angela Bassett), who has asked him to assist her government in seizing and stopping the evil AI. With shreds of his former teams and a collection of former foes, Hunt and his IMF remnants set off on a global festival of missions to capture and poison The Entity, removing it from global servers and thus, saving the world. The story of an omniscient AI with convenient powers and even more convenient ways to stop it is as flimsy as it was in Mission: Impossible- Dead Reckoning, but this time, it’s better used as a vessel to get Ethan doing impossible things from pole to pole, from heights to depths.

A franchise that used to be a sandbox for visionary directors became the Cruise and McQuarrie stunt hour, for better and for worse. But even as an almost three-hour journey through the limits of the planet, this installment also takes us through the franchise’s previous movies, and seemingly through others that never were. Far beyond the cold-open catchup, The Final Reckoning is full of references to the previous films, which begets more character reveals and check-ins, some of which let Ethan off the hook for his previous collateral damage, and some which retcon his previous successes to render him blameworthy. Sure, I cheered for a reference to “The Rabbit’s Foot,” briefly, before remembering that the current villain has nothing on Owen Davian (Philip Seymour Hoffman). Though “Final,” is in the title, this movie does not commit to being a grand ending, but it does take things back to the beginning for references, changes, and swan songs for as many characters as it can. And almost none of it pays off.

The finale fever of Dead Reckoning has not dissipated, which has this movie chucking so much at the wall that barely changes the stakes. Further, the omniscience of The Entity and its mind-meld with Ethan undermines the stakes of his action in a way that functions as an Infinity Stones plot with higher percentages of success. Without spoiling larger reveals, names and nods from those who’d have reason to question Hunt would seem to matter, but they don’t, and if anything, don’t entirely make sense in the great story the movie is telling.

What’s perhaps worse is that other egregious retcons are mostly abandoned instead of leaned on for a thrilling conclusion. The bologna about Hunt and his “women”? Mostly set aside, save for some glances at Grace (Hayley Atwell). The bit about Hunt as a murderer and the IMF recruiting former criminals in exchange for their freedom? Mostly meaningless, save for a way to give something to Grace as the former thief turned IMF agent. And the boring, mostly pointless big bad in Gabriel (Esai Morales)? Your guess at his relevance is as good as mine, but I guess having him as the closest thing to a human villain for Ethan to fight with in a movie about a rogue AI is his only purpose. It’s frustrating, since so much of the last movie’s retconning was an egregious stain on Hunt’s history, which ends up having no payoff, but it’s simultaneously refreshing that instead of more of it, the movie mostly sets it aside in favor of what we’re really there for: high-stakes action.

And the action never stops in this heart-pounding blast through all of the world’s resources. Ethan has hung from planes, trains, and automobiles, and now he’s being plunged to the darkest depths of the sea with a fancy pressure suit. This film seems to break free of the traditional three-act structure to craft a back-to-back mission collection that functions as an exposition speed-run through Hunt’s greatest abilities. Hunt has almost no character journey; he feels like the war horse blasting his way through missions, ensembles, and action sequences. Scenes have more character reveals and cameos than Oppenheimer. There’s almost no room to breathe as even plotting sequences are interspliced with other scenes and dynamic camera moves which is surprisingly restrained when you consider the movie’s length and how draining long conversations might be.

And as Ethan makes his way through his stunts, he seems to bop through other movies like if a highly trained super agent ended up with the satellite dish from Stay Tuned. Hunt finds himself blurring the line between himself and Maverick when he’s begging for permission to board an aircraft carrier, he seems to dance with a Tom Clancy flick when asking the president for deference, and most magical of all, he seems to land in the vintage James Cameron installment that never was when he ends up in a dripping ship populated by a motley underwater crew.

I can only speculate as to the reasoning behind changing this film’s title from “Dead Reckoning Part II” to “The Final Reckoning,” but my head canon suspicion is that it came from a place of distancing itself from the previous film’s setups. The M:I purist in me is conflicted between being happy that the film didn’t revel in its strange retcons, but she also laments that they were added for seemingly no real reason. Mission: Impossible- The Final Reckoning is wise for having mostly abandoned the flimsy setups of its predecessor and instead creating the ultimate collection of some of the best heart-pounding action sequences of the entire franchise.

Mission: Impossible- The Final Reckoning hits theaters May 23, 2025