Dense with narrative, profoundly overstuffed and a whole lot of movie at nearly three hours in length, “Mission: Impossible- The Final Reckoning” isn’t exactly the farewell you want for your big franchise grand finale. Especially given someone like Tom Cruise probably wants to end on a pitch-perfect note. Because ‘Final Reckoning’ is deeply flawed, and not the ideal unimpeachable climax, Cruise, Paramount and writer/director Christopher McQuarrie, the genius architect behind it all, probably hoped for.
And yet, still, as faulty and janky as it is at times, overburdened by all the franchise legacy elements it decides to take on and the extra McGuffin keys it forces everyone to unlock, creating a whole additional mess of exposition to grapple with, ‘Final Reckoning’ is still a largely thrilling and compelling edition to the ‘Mission Impossible’ canon. Because overflowing with overly complex plot and escalating complication upon complication, there’s still intense edge-of-your-seat action, nerve-wracking anxiety and moving emotion to be found within.
READ MORE: Cannes 2025 Most Anticipated Films: ‘Sentimental Value,’ ‘Eddington,’ ‘Die My Love’
The sequel to “Mission: Impossible- Dead Reckoning,” this final edition picks up where that one left off, but the events are one year later, and a lot has transpired—too much, frankly.
‘Final Reckoning’ opens with a changed world not unlike our own but exaggerated to the nth degree. The Entity has flooded the zone with propaganda, people are more divided and distrustful than ever, a doomsday cult has arisen around this psychotic ChatGPT, and more importantly, The Entity has begun infiltrating the security systems of all the nations with nuclear capabilities. As the world goes on high alert, and the U.S. nervously inches toward DEFCON alarm, nuclear arms fall under the control of the Entity, putting the globe on a high level of panic.
But the story gets complicated and convoluted very quickly with several (too many) McGuffins in play. Having failed The Entity at the end of ‘Dead Reckoning’— Ethan Hunt (Cruise), having stolen back the all-powerful cruciform key, instrumental in defeating this rogue artificial intelligence force—Gabriel (Esai Morales), the liaison of the evil A.I., has fallen out of its favor, but has his own plan of retaliation.
Having been betrayed by his former master, Gabriel hopes to harness and control The Entity himself. This leads him to Luther (Ving Rhames), the IMF’s computer whiz, who has created a poison pill to destroy The Entity.
Explaining more and getting into the weeds honestly gives me a headache, so the short version is this: Gabriel steals Luther’s poison pill—the one thing that can destroy The Entity—this malevolent A.I. is hellbent on hacking into every nuclear facility and causing WWIII and Ethan then has several tasks to put in motion to create a uber delicate, if-one-thing-goes-wrong-we’re-screwed master plan.
One: purposefully getting caught and arrested by the U.S. government, which sees him as largely responsible for this impending global calamity. Two: convincing the United States President, Erika Sloane (Angela Bassett), the former CIA director from “Mission Impossible—Fallout” and new CIA director, former IMF director Eugene Kittridge (Henry Czerny), to let him go so he can get to the Russian Sevastopol submarine buried at the bottom of the ocean so he can get to the Entity’s source code (if you haven’t seen ‘Dead Reckoning,’ you will be lost). Three: Then he must somehow hand over the source code to Gabriel so he can unknowingly add the poison pill he has stolen to the technobabble stew and unwittingly annihilate the entity. Got that?
Confused, don’t worry, so is everyone else (sort of). However, the particulars remain largely unimportant, and the A, to B, to C elements of the plot are understood even if you’re a little fuzzy on the exact details (it’s honestly a harder movie to explain than watch).
What really ensues is arguably three protracted acts. One: the tortuous set-up. Two: the electrifying underwater/submarine chapter—filled with its own many complications— and three: Ethan chasing down Gabriel on old school propeller planes while the rest of the IMF team, Grace (Haley Atwell), Benji (Simon Pegg), Paris (Pom Klementieff) and more try and avert a global nuclear disaster. Essentially, just another Monday for the IMF team.
So, yes, a problematic movie plot-wise—and we haven’t even really explained all the throwback ‘Mission’ legacy plot points and characters it decides to take on—but acts two and three, even when preposterously implausible, are exhilarating.
At its best, ‘Final Reckoning’ is a master class in suspense, tension-building and nerve-wracking escalation construction. Give a man a mission, or a team a side quest? McQ knows how to dump obstacle after obstacle to try and thwart them (almost to the point of frustration, but balanced nonetheless).
The underwater Sevastopol submarine sequence is masterfully crafted and filled with such anxiety that you may find yourself unable to breathe. Likewise, the prop plane set piece is so harrowing and death-defying, you’ll find yourself gasping for air, terrified for Ethan’s life, and watching the entire thing through your fretful fingers.
All the while, sweaty, taut nail-biting pressure boils over between characters: various distressed U.S. government officials (Holt McCallany, Janet McTeer, Nick Offerman), troubled sea-faring commanders and grunts (Charles Parnell, Hannah Waddingham, Katy O’Brian), and other law enforcement officials (Shea Whigham, Greg Tarzan Davis), either aghast at what Ethan is trying to pull off or trying to actively thwart or undermine his hanging-by-a-thread mission.
Say what you will about the way McQ bites off more than he can chew (he does), the way he miscalculates and adds a ton of unnecessary vintage ‘Mission’ franchise elements from the past (he does), and the way this usually hyper-aware, hyper-mindful-of-his-surrounding filmmaker can’t see the forest for the trees (he loses the plot). This writer/director, even when overtaxing himself and overstraining his movie, still knows how to craft an adrenaline-charged, white-knuckling experience for the big screen.
Thematically, these last few ‘Mission’ films have been built around the moral failures of Ethan Hunt and the greater good calculus he is always testing. I.e., he constantly endangers the planet by never being willing to sacrifice his friends and allies. “We live and die in the shadows, for those we hold close, and for those we never meet,” he says about the cost of the job and the ethical duties he always seems to struggle with. And while ‘Final Reckoning’ fails to take things to their logical conclusion given this motif, sacrifice, it still manages to largely satisfy, regardless.
‘Mission’ films are generally made in a sure-to-be-disastrous manner that somehow defies the odds. Built around action-set pieces, the story is then reverse-engineered, plot and story are stitched together backwards using the force of the big action to tie things together. They should never, ever work, and it’s one of the reasons ‘Mission’ films are so expensive, but Cruise and McQuarrie always manage to pull off, well, the impossible.
Only with ‘Final Reckoning,’ they don’t. Or at least never as seamlessly as they have in the past. Still, given all these myriad issues, it’s a testament to the rollercoaster McQ and Cruise know how to craft that the movie remains terrifyingly exciting and entertaining despite it all.
And spoiler alert: the door is ambiguously left open for more, the title notwithstanding. ‘Final Reckoning’ might not be the perfect note to end this elaborate action symphony on, but as a sustained chord of passionate peril, intrigue, friendship and the wrenching expenses of keeping the world safe, hell, you could still do a lot worse. [B]
