Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning

If this is the final Mission: Impossible film, I wouldn’t be mad about it. That being said, I kinda don’t want it to be.

Technically acting as the second part of 2023’s just okay Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning picks up two months after Ethan Hunt’s (Tom Cruise) last adventure, and follows this rogue IMF agents as he hunts down the other half of a secret key that will help end the dangerous artificial intelligence threat that is The Entity. Needing to outwit the CIA as well as outmaneuver returning antagonist and Entity sympathizer Gabriel (Essai Morales), Ethan and his usual crew of hacker Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames) and field agent Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg) must find a way to take the Entity offline before it compromises the nuclear arsenal of the world, spelling doom for humanity and the planet alike. This final mission, should Ethan choose to accept it, will be his most impossible yet.

Having rewatched all seven previous Mission: Impossible films before jumping into the franchise’s much-delayed finale, I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted and what I expected going in. And while this one isn’t perfect, there’s something about it that I can’t deny I enjoyed, even if the quality of the film isn’t always up to snuff in certain areas.

A definite improvement from Dead Reckoning, Final Reckoning benefits from the fact that it’s essentially a “part 2” film and doesn’t have to bog itself down with too much exposition outside of a shaky first act that admittedly had me worried. Fortunately, things only go up from there, and by the time the action hits and the ridiculously over-the-top AI storyline begins to play out, I couldn’t help but feel entertained the longer things went on. And with each new set piece feeling exciting and inventive in ways that still impress even after all these years, Final Reckoning ultimately turns out to be a better-than-average blockbuster that doubles as one of the more interesting entries in the Mission: Impossible series.

However, Tom Cruise’s attempt to action himself to death doesn’t immediately equate to a perfect movie. Still far too long and a bit overstuffed in ways that definitely could have been scaled back, the Final Reckoning is a tale of artificial intelligence gone rogue and, for the most part, does justice to a scary idea that may well come to pass in the future. Unfortunately, the script isn’t always up to the task of crafting a tale that always makes sense.

Luckily, the ever-constant sense of finality Final Reckoning plays with does wonders to swap some of the film’s meh-ness with some genuinely thrilling plot beats, helping to even out a sequel that could have easily gone the way of Dead Reckoning and devolve into an anticlimactic snooze fest. Still, even with Final Reckoning’s flaws, this is a Mission: Impossible film that proudly wears three decades of filmmaking on its sleeve, proving once again that there’s always room for some “little Tom Cruise” in our lives.

With any luck we’ll get a unnecessary Mission: Impossible sequel somewhere down the line (à la Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny) where a 70 plus-year-old Tom Cruise once again puts himself on death’s door for our entertainment, but until then, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is a better than average send-off for a franchise that I’ll honestly miss. Do yourself a favor and choose to accept this one.