Film Review - Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning
Images courtesy of Paramount Pictures.
Nearly thirty years ago, Tom Cruise accepted his very first mission as IMF agent Ethan Hunt in Brian De Palma’s action-thriller Mission: Impossible. In 2025, after endless impossible missions (which actually turned out to be possible), death-defying stunts and seven films, Cruise returns as Hunt for what could very well be the last time in Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning.
Picking up straight after the events of Dead Reckoning Part One, the film sees Hunt and his team - Grace (Haley Atwell), Luther (Ving Rhames) and Benji (Simon Pegg) - up against their biggest threat yet; a rogue and malicious artificial intelligence known as the Entity. This all-powerful and God-like technology has taken over the world’s biggest intelligence networks, with the intention to turn nation against nation, start a nuclear war, and end humanity as we know it. With the U.S. government against him and madman Gabriel (Esai Morales) on his tail, Hunt is running out of time. To destroy the Entity, he must take the key he retrieved in the last film and insert it into the Podkova device, which is conveniently located in a Russian submarine wreck at the very bottom of the ocean. Just another day at the office for Hunt, of course.
Mission: Impossible is a film franchise that has only gotten better with time, each being bigger than the last and pushing the boundaries of action filmmaking. The high standard set is the result of the collaboration between Cruise and director Christopher McQuarrie, who has been on board since Rogue Nation and continues to inject unprecedented levels of adrenaline into each film. That streak is extended here, with The Final Reckoning being one of the most entertaining, wild and exhilarating entries in the series. Both the action and emotion are effectively on par, as the stakes feel higher than ever for Hunt and his team. With its sombre tone and many flashbacks to the previous films, there is a real sense of finality here, as audiences prepare themselves to say farewell to Hunt and other long-running fan favourites like Luther and Benji.
However, Mission: Impossible prioritises action above all else, and the performance and dedication of Cruise is what viewers really want to see. Love him or hate him, there’s no denying that Cruise is THE ultimate action hero. Audiences have seen him scale buildings, ride a motorcycle off of a cliff, and run extreme distances that are likely not humanly possible. Just when we thought he'd done it all, The Final Reckoning begs to differ. The film’s two key stunt pieces are true cinematic wonders, to say the least. The first is a claustrophobic and nerve-wracking deep dive that sees Cruise underwater for an extended amount of time with limited air supply, and the second, which comes at the film’s climax, sees the actor hanging for dear life onto the wing of a biplane that is twisting through the air at high altitude. It’ll be up to you to decide whether Cruise is brave or stupid (or both), but his commitment is something to behold.
The phrase gets thrown around a lot these days, but Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning really does demand to be seen on the biggest screen possible. Is it overlong? Yes. Will you understand any of the tech and spy jargon and babble? Probably not. Will you be confused? Occasionally. But none of that matters when you’re having this much fun as a viewer. While this hasn’t officially been confirmed as the final MI film (let’s be honest, Cruise will probably be doing this until he’s in a retirement home), it works as a sophisticated and thrilling send-off.
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Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning is screening in cinemas now. For tickets and more info, click here.