After watching “Mission: Impossible II” (2000) in theaters soon after its release date of May 24, 2000, I decided not to see anymore then promised to return once the franchise was on its last film. Time to pay the piper and (re)watch the existing entire franchise, seven movies, before “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning” (2025) is released on May 23, 2025 (or more specifically before my screening on Wednesday, May 21, 2025. First, “A Minecraft Movie” (2025) and now this! What I do for the love of the game! I’m probably the only person not into this franchise. Now I’ve reached the last movie! Please clap.
“Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning” (2025) is the eighth of eight movies that reboot the television series. Starting two months after the end of “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One” (2023), everyone is trying to either capture or convince Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) that they know how to handle the AI known as the Entity. With Gabriel (Esai Morales) as Ethan’s biggest hater, and the world on a three-day countdown to the brink of nuclear annihilation, Ethan and the team not only have to defy the odds but outsmart the Entity. Will Ethan save the world without getting crushed under his self-condemnation since he feels responsible for everything?
No more hot Cruise. No zaddy Cruise from “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One” and no maximum blinding movie star hotness from “Mission: Impossible II.” Cruise is all business with his hair a bit scruffy to distinguish him from the scores of servicepeople that appear in many of the scenes. He often appears shirtless or even down to his tactical black briefs, but the more skin that Cruise shows, the less hot he is. It is science. They often style him in sweats. Sweats! Side note: Cruise looks like Jason Bateman in the posters. When Bateman looks older, will he look like Cruise? What is happening? The most erotic scene for Ethan is when Grace (Hayley Atwell) tends to his wounds as if one of them was going to die with white sheets everywhere so the flashbacks would seem mournfully joyous. He stayed faithful to his wife in deed even if not in spirit. Hell, it was Rebecca Ferguson. I’d sign a waiver. Emotional affairs seem fine, and even Julia moved on and remarried. No idea how Cruise mostly finds a way to escalate the danger level of his stunts, but he does. The denouement stunt feels as if it was lifted from the silent film era with Gabriel only missing a mustache to twirl as he laughs and toys with Ethan struggling to stay on old-fashioned planes. Through his stunts, Cruise discovered and embraced his emotional toolkit and palette. A very serious actor with a restricted range can evoke everything from humor to pathos while being a daredevil. While there are no laughs this time around, there are points of levity rooted in characters reacted to his peak audacity, particularly brief standouts Captain Bledsoe (Tramell Tillman from “Severance”) and Kodiak (Katy O’Brian—so proud of her).
“Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning” reveals what Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames) was up to when he abruptly left in “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One.” Grace was officially under Impossible Missions Force (“IMF”) Director Kittridge (Henry Czerny) but drops everything to back up Ethan and kind of lives up to the meaning of her name. Benji (Simon Pegg) is at his lowest levels of annoying, but still has no business being in the field and is the weakest physical link. The team is back with some additional members. Paris (Pom Klementieff) lends a helping hand even though Jasper Briggs (Shea Whigham) and Theo Degas (Greg Tarzan Davis) were supposed to be guarding her to ensure that she pays for her crimes. Wonder how she got out of their care? There are revelations about why Briggs has a grudge against Ethan. All this time, I have been whingeing about the women agents not getting to cook for longer than one movie and/or not be sexualized, and my prayers get answered in the form of a turncoat assassin. Rumors are that Klementieff was nicknamed “Pom Cruise.” Give a leading role to this woman! She was a one-woman army.
For those hoping for details on the backstory between Ethan and Gabriel, don’t. Gabriel is a two-dimensional hater, and Morales clearly relishes chewing the scenery. The villain crown definitively goes to Philip Seymour Hoffman. For those Lane fanboyss, his butt is still locked up somewhere so please just stop. Lane had great organizational skills and could grow facial hair. Does your king wear an orange jumpsuit chilling in a jail cell? You must kill a real villain. There is a terrific sequence where “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning” reveals how Gabriel and the Entity communicated, and the greedy gus in me wishes that aspect of the story was explored more. I’d love a little possession horror thrown into an action movie, but nope. Instead, the Entity is working on gaining control of all the nuclear weapons so humanity can get annihilated. Best threat ever. Fine, the Entity wins. There are human beings who side with the Entity in the government, and again, it felt as if that could have been expanded more but is only shown on the American side. It is a bit disappointing, but not a reason to deduct points.
Does the current count rise from four to five “Mission: Impossible” movies that feature Ethan as a rogue agent? Telling would be a spoiler, but it is debatable and answered in the power struggle. “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning” would not be a “Mission: Impossible” movie without a power struggle. President Erika Sloane (Angela Bassett) is underground with her advisers, which include the aforementioned Kittredge, who has not changed a bit, Secretary of Defense Serling Bernstein (Holt McCallany, who played an Assistant Director of CIA in “The Amateur”), Secretary of State Walters (Janet McTerr), Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Sidney (Nick Offerman sans mustache), NSA Head Angstrom (Mark Gatiss), and Director of National Intelligence and head of the National Reconnaissance Office Richards (Charles Parnell), who also appeared in “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One.” Basically, should the US preemptively attack other countries’ nuclear armaments to ensure their destruction before the Entity can use them thus limiting the loss of human life from billions to millions?
For a “Mission: Impossible” movie, “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning” is the closest that Cruise has ever been to being in a political movie. He just wants world peace, y’all, the greater good, ideally no loss of human life and maybe, just maybe, a Black woman president. On a good day, these are not controversial positions, but nowadays maybe. There is a constant theme of people on opposing sides acknowledging that they cannot believe each other but knowing that if they can overcome their distrust of each other, they could save each other. In the film, it is usually Russians versus Americans, but at the beginning, it is applicable to everyone with the internet sowing further division and causing people to catastrophize. Old man Cruise thinks that we’re spending too much time on the internet, and yikes, he is not wrong. It took eight movies over the course of three decades, but cowriters Erik Jendresen and Christopher McQuarrie found the pulse of the times and put it in the story. By George, I think they have got it. For people who love the franchise because it is mindless action fun and do not need a story, they will not like it, but I did.
I’m also going to give the “Avengers: Endgame” (2019) award to the writing duo because “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning” retroactively and convincingly pretends as if there was a through line from the first movie to the last, and there was a person in charge of the storylines and planned this ending. There was not, but whoever did the reverse engineering pulled it off and redeemed the underwritten and ludicrous confidential weapon from “Mission Impossible III” (2006), which I kind of anticipated and squirreled away, along with ingeniously bringing back supporting characters that no one had on their wish list and gave them a backstory. Hint: it was not Jeremy Renner so guess that he completely got let out of his contract because of his near mortal injury. It felt as if the filmmakers learned from their mistakes, redeemed themselves from their past criminal narrative missteps and in the process, found a way to tie it into Ethan’s no self-condemnation arc. The tons of flashback will feel like punishment to the devoted fans of the franchise, especially since it extends the runtime of the finale to make it the longest one in the franchise.
“Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol” (2011) was the gold standard after watching seven of the eight movies. Maybe because it was the first “Mission: Impossible” movie that I saw on the big screen in twenty-five years, I’m tempted to give the top spot to “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning” without otherwise changing my remaining past ranking: “Mission: Impossible II,” “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One,” “Mission: Impossible III,” “Mission: Impossible – Fallout” (2018), “Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation” (2015) and “Mission: Impossible” (1996). The eighth film was heavy-handed, humorless, too long and was an ensemble piece only when Cruise was not on screen, but for once it was a solid story, and it redeemed past underwritten storylines (revisionist history if you are not feeling charitable), and the stunts were impressive. Woo still stands as the master when it comes to the transcendent, timeless visual beauty of a “Mission: Impossible” movie. The franchise never rose to the level of “John Wick: Chapter 4” (2023), which shamelessly took similar stunt ideas and made them into high art without pulling punches. Favorite Cruise films for context (not in a particular order or an exhaustive list): “Interview with the Vampire” (1994), “Magnolia” (1999), “Collateral” (2004) and the aforementioned “Edge of Tomorrow” (2014). To be fair, I tend to stay away from spending money on anyone who owns an island (among other reasons), but he is entertaining and my preferred pick for Secretary of Health and Human Services. Cruise, your mission if you choose to accept it: get us vaccines! Now that is an impossible mission and the sequel that I want to see at a theatre near me.
