Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning Review

Just shy of 30 years after the very first Mission: Impossible was released, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is back for the final (for now) installment in the series with Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, a direct sequel to Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One. Facing the end of the world, and risk of a nuclear war between countries, the fate of the world lies in the hands of an AI system named “Entity”, and the only person that can stop this cyber nightmare from taking over is none other than Ethan Hunt, despite the CIA’s better judgement. 

The first 45 minutes of the film is essentially just a recap of the previous seven films before it. It’s nostalgic and reminds viewers that this may be the last time we’ll ever see Ethan Hunt again. And for the casual movie-goer, a seemingly perfect move. Not everyone is expected to keep up with the last 30 years of a movie’s lore, and giving viewers context helps them understand the flow of the film. The only issue is that the constant flashbacks from previous films, the over-explaining, and the long winded context makes this first hour feel excruciatingly slow. Even for the people who have some idea of what the premise is or remembers bits and pieces of the previous films, it feels unnecessary and as if they’re, for the lack of a better term, dumbing the story down.

After this first hour, the iconic theme music fades into the opening credits, and the audience are presented with a montage of the last 7 films to really drive home that this is it. 

We watch as Ethan Hunt teams up with allies Grace (Hayley Atwell), Luther (Ving Rhames), Benji (Simon Pegg), and Paris (Pom Klementieff), two months after the events of the previous film, in a plot to get to Gabriel (Esai Morales) before he lets the “Entity” take over the world. This next hour is a flurry of exposition for the steps each of the characters are meant to take to succeed in this mission, with the technical language and the constant back and forth feeling quite jarring. The action in this film isn’t as prevalent as the other films because of the consistent elaboration, but once the second act hits, we go from 0 to 100 and get some of the most insane action scenes ever performed by Cruise, and some amazing performances by the ensemble cast; namely Hayley Atwell, Pom Klementieff, and Simon Pegg in that final anxiety inducing scene.

This last hour feels like the previous Mission: Impossible films we’ve seen before. Filled with high adrenaline, immersive, and tense action scenes, sending off the franchise in a big way and calling homage to the tropes we all know and love. 

In a way, it makes sense that the storyline feels convoluted and cliched, as the marketing of the last few films (including this one) have heavily relied on Tom Cruise’s adamant desire to perform his own death defying stunts rather than the plot itself. And there is no doubt that he puts on quite the hell of a show. Audiences will be biting their nails watching Ethan Hunt navigate a sunken submarine, and be at the edge of their seats watching him in the pivotal scene hanging off the wing of a biplane. Honing in on how action spy movies are meant to make us feel.

But regardless of the loose plot, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning does hold up in the spy film genre and is a great way to say goodbye to Ethan Hunt and the blockbuster franchise.