Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning (PG-13)

Directed by: Christopher McQuarrie
Starring: Tom Cruise
May 2025


Warning! This is NOT a movie review. This is a critique of the film. Intended to initiate a dialogue, the following analysis explores various aspects of the film and may contain spoilers. For concerns over objectionable content, please first refer to one of the many parental movie guide websites. Ratings are based on a four star system. Happy reading!


“The world is changing, the truth is vanishing, war is coming.”

Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning picks up almost immediately after the events of the previous film, Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning (2023). When we last saw Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his team, they were faced with the daunting task of outwitting an advanced AI (lamely named “the Entity”). Now, to prevent a nuclear holocaust, Ethan must use a cruciform key, an object he acquired in the previous movie, to unlock a computer drive containing the source code that can destroy the Entity.

Acting as the Entity’s liaison is Gabriel (Esai Morales), an assassin who tries his best (but fails miserably) to be a top-tier villain. Gabriel always seems to be several steps ahead of Ethan and his team, which is no surprise since he’s receiving instructions from the Entity. So the question becomes, will Ethan’s plan to do the exact opposite of what the Entity expects actually work? And, to add a ticking time bomb element to the plot, Ethan’s team must figure out how to stop the AI before it hacks into every nation’s nuclear arsenal and obliterates the planet.

Sound like an impossible task?

Don’t sweat it.

Even though it takes Ethan and his team nearly three hours to complete their mission (it only took 2 hours for them to save the world in the first film), doomsday is averted and life goes on as if nothing happened; which is ironic, since after watching this film, your life will go on as if nothing happened too.

That isn’t to disparage the movie’s two protracted, well-crafted action sequences—one takes place in the depths of the ocean and the other occurs high in the sky—but the balance of the film is a retread of earlier Missions. Indeed, a couple of the movie’s montages recycle clips from previous films; one dispenses brief images to refresh the audience’s memory and another is used to produce feelings of nostalgia.

In an attempt at bringing the series full circle, the story hearkens back to a few key characters and objects from the earlier movies. For starters, CIA analyst William Donloe (Rolf Saxon)—viewers will remember him as the poor fellow who took several trips to the bathroom while Ethan made his pulse-pounding descent into the computer room on wires in the first film—has a significant role in this movie. Also, U.S. Intelligence agent, Jim Phelps Jr. (Shea Whigham), is the son of Jim Phelps (Jon Voight), the villain Ethan bested in Mission: Impossible (1996). Another allusion to the OG movie is the NOC list; the item multiple parties vied to possess.

Mission: Impossible III (2006) gets some love with a mention of villain Owen Davian (Philip Seymour Hoffman), montage clips of Ethan’s wife Julia (Michelle Monaghan) and a reference to that film’s destructive MacGuffin…the Rabbit’s Foot.

There are also many similarities between Dead Reckoning and The Final Reckoning since the films are a continuous, 2-part adventure. Many actors have reprised their roles in The Final Reckoning including: Morales as villain Gabriel, Hayley Atwell as uber-thief Grace, Pom Klementieff as the aptly named French assassin Paris, Angela Bassett as President Erika Sloane, Henry Czerny as CIA director Eugene Kittridge, along with many others.

Also returning for this film is director Christopher McQuarrie. McQuarrie excels at realizing the movie’s action sequences, but struggles to sustain viewer interest during slower, talky scenes. To break up the monotony, the director employs various storytelling strategies, including montages and flash forwards (a technique used in heist films like Ocean’s Eleven or action films like Avengers: Endgame to depict what the characters will do when they carry out the intricate capers being discussed during the long-winded planning session). Unfortunately, these gimmicky attempts at punching up the action, along with the overly dramatic music by composers Max Aruj and Alfie Godfrey, make the scenes play out like those on a typical TV procedural. McQuarrie’s most annoying directorial choice is his fixation on the “poison pill”—he cuts to closeups of the flash drive countless times, especially during the biplane scene.

Writers McQuarrie and Erik Jendresen have churned out a story that never quite takes off. There are some decent story elements here—both new and rehashed—but there’s an apparent abandonment of character development since the writers assume the audience already knows the IMF team by now. The series’ tropes are so well-established they’ve become hackneyed; and yet, the writers do little to divest themselves of these expected elements (i.e., the ole latex mask gag) or predictable patterns (i.e., defeating the enemy with milliseconds to spare). And the dialog they’ve written, especially the voiceover narrations for Ving Rhames’ Luther Stickell, is rife with stilted speech and fortune cookie platitudes. Examples: “Our lives are the sum of our choices,” and, “Those we never meet.” President Sloane says Ethan is “the best of men in the worst of times.” Okay, that one’s kind of cool.

As the star of the show, the success of the Mission movies lands squarely on the shoulders of Cruise, who always rises to the occasion, regardless of what the writers and directors throw at him. The 62-year-old actor is in amazing shape (as evidenced in the treadmill scene) and still does his own stunts. Though some throw shade on Cruise’s skill as an actor, no one can question his dedication to the craft. And if they do, I dare them to dangle from an upside-down plane with only a seatbelt to hold onto like he does in this movie.

The main theme of The Final Reckoning is the same as in the previous film: fear of AI and its destructive potential. To avoid being tracked by the Entity, global intelligence agencies unplug and go dark. Ethan receives his mission briefing on an old VHS tape. Gabriel flies a vintage biplane, which can’t be controlled by the Entity. This reversion to analog over digital is reminiscent of the Battlestar Galactica reboot (2004), when survivors of the Cylon onslaught use older, non-hackable Colonial Vipers to repel enemy forces.

These movies aren’t typically known for their dramatic character interchanges, but there are two meaningful scenes where Ethan makes amends with those he’s hurt in the past. When Ethan apologizes for ruining Donloe’s career, the CIA analyst, who was reassigned to an arctic outpost after Ethan hacked into the database on his watch, forgives Ethan without hesitation. Not only did the demotion rescue Donloe from a career spent in mindless tedium, it changed the trajectory of his life when he met his wife. Donloe returns the knife Ethan accidentally dropped onto his workstation decades earlier, effectively burying the hatchet between them.

The other individual Ethan hurt, though indirectly, was Jim Phelps Jr. Phelps could be angry that Ethan’s actions lead to the death of his father, but his motivation isn’t revenge. When Ethan extends his hand to propose a truce, Phelps transfers the gun from one hand to the other and shakes Ethan’s hand in a gesture of forgiveness. A touching moment.

The globe-trotting story was shot in Norway, South Africa and London. As with the other Mission films, the production elements in The Final Reckoning are superb, especially during the major set piece action scenes.

In the final analysis, The Final Reckoning is a rote doomsday scenario that could’ve been transplanted from any other spy/thriller/action movie. It goes overboard with fan service and is a “Best Hits” pastiche of the earlier Mission movies. It’s a predictable, safe series capper that doesn’t deliver the kind of bang such a storied franchise deserved. Sadly, not even the exciting final 30 minutes can make up for the movie’s slow start and standard, cookie-cutter plot.

Still, The Final Reckoning is one of the cleanest action movies I’ve seen in recent years. And, I’d go back to the theater just to see the heart-stopping biplane confrontation…one of the most ingeniously storyboarded and executed action sequences I’ve ever had the pleasure of beholding.

Bruce Geller’s Mission: Impossible first aired on TV in 1966, and the first movie was released in 1996. Now, after 29 years and 8 films, Cruise’s movie mission has finally come to an end. But will the mission continue with other actors?

As we’ve learned from watching these movies, anything is possible.

Rating: 2½ out of 4

Tags: Action , Adventure, Thriller