At some point, every long-running franchise has to face the question: what’s left to say? With “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning,” the answer is both thrilling and uneasy. The eighth film in the series barrels forward like a self-authored eulogy, drawing from the greatest hits while confronting the cost of constantly cheating death.
For Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise), the mission is to save the world from a rogue artificial intelligence. For director Christopher McQuarrie and the franchise itself, the mission is tougher: justify its continued existence while giving its hero a proper sendoff by having him face an algorithm and save the world through sleight of hand before it’s too late.
DEFCON 1: The Algorithm is the Villain Now
Following the events of ‘Dead Reckoning: Part One’, Ethan receives a message from now-President Erika Sloane (Angela Bassett), calling him back into the shadows. A sentient AI known as the Entity has escaped containment and begun destabilizing the digital infrastructure of every major world power. It’s turning defense systems against their owners, manipulating markets, and exploiting the very connectivity that once made the world efficient.
Ethan’s mission—should he choose to accept it—is to find the source code buried inside a sunken Russian submarine and destroy it before Gabriel (Esai Morales), a zealot with a past link to Ethan, can get there first. Gabriel doesn’t want to kill Ethan. He wants him alive, to witness the Entity reshape the world under its control. In one chilling moment, he tells Ethan he’ll let him live in the Entity’s new order. That idea, that Ethan has outlived his own usefulness, gives the film its existential edge.
Adding another twist of guilt, the film connects this threat to Ethan’s past. In “Mission: Impossible III,” the Rabbit’s Foot MacGuffin is now revealed to have been the Entity’s embryonic form. He chose not to recover it, opting instead to save his wife Julia (Michelle Monaghan). The consequences have caught up.
The AI-as-antagonist premise is absurd and timely in equal measure. It works because the film doesn’t overplay it as pure sci-fi. Instead, it leans into the moral panic: what if the most dangerous villain is the one you accidentally helped create?
Team IMF: Old Tricks, New Stakes
To save the world anew, Ethan assembles a familiar squad: Benji (Simon Pegg), Luther (Ving Rhames), Grace (Hayley Atwell), and new recruit Degas (Greg Tarzan Davis). They break Paris (Pom Klementieff) out of prison, hunt down coordinates, and race across continents in a series of increasingly implausible and often breathtaking set pieces. What follows is a globe-hopping scavenger hunt stitched together with high-tech MacGuffins, characters who talk like briefing slides, and the unmistakable aura of a franchise trying to sum up its legacy without quite knowing how.
To its credit, ‘The Final Reckoning’ has moments of sheer, electric brilliance. The action is, unsurprisingly, magnificent. In particular, the sequence with Cruise battling atop an old-school biplane is pure cinematic insanity. Bonus points for using analog aircraft to avoid the Entity’s detection—proof that sometimes, going retro is more than a stylistic choice. These moments still pop, even after three decades of increasingly bonkers stunts. It’s Cruise’s body against entropy, and he refuses to flinch. He clearly hasn’t slowed down, and that physical commitment gives this film its pulse.
This thematic thread—analog defiance in a digital world—courses through the film’s strongest moments. McQuarrie isn’t coy about the themes here. The choreography of the action itself becomes an act of resistance. The sequence mentioned above felt like a direct callback to “Top Gun: Maverick,” where Cruise’s Maverick survives a dogfight in an F-14 against a stealth jet. In both films, the machines may be newer and smarter, but they’re no match for a pilot with nerves of steel and a stick shift. This isn’t just a stylistic choice; it’s a manifesto. ‘The Final Reckoning’ wears its analog fetishism like a badge of honor.
A Tiring Exercise in Exposition
But then, the movie stops. And talks. And talks some more.
For all its kinetic highs, the film gets tangled in its own web of exposition, having way too much to say but having nary an idea how to say it cleanly. It explains itself constantly, as if afraid the audience might slip behind. Some scenes play like staged info dumps, with characters finishing each other’s bullet points instead of each other’s thoughts. Every scene feels like it’s trying to justify its presence, especially those involving Sloane’s war room of government heads—a who’s-who of talent (Janet McTeer, Nick Offerman, Holt McCallany, Charles Parnell, Mark Gatiss) forced to recite exposition with Shakespearean intensity. Even in scenes where Benji and Grace lead the planning to intercept Ethan as the two parties execute the mission apart, these over-expositions abound.
You don’t “watch” some of these scenes; you endure them.
This brings me to the film’s other glaring issue: the runtime. Clocking in at over 170 minutes, the film indulges its every instinct. Some of that indulgence is fun—Grace’s evolution from thief to IMF recruit is one of the better arcs the series has offered—but much of it feels like narrative hoarding. Every subplot, every old thread is dragged into the light. Some are worth the time. Others feel like legacy maintenance. And there are even other decisions (Hannah Waddingham’s role as Admiral Neely is criminally underwritten and severely underused) that make you question whether McQuarrie simply cast a wide net and put every big name in the film even if they didn’t need to be there.
A Hit-or-Miss Attempt at Fan Service
Of course, ‘The Final Reckoning’ doesn’t entirely shed its franchise obligations. One supporting character’s “surprise” lineage ties them to a past villain, a twist that barely registers emotionally but sure checks the “mythology” box. Other callbacks straddle the line between organic and overdetermined.
That said, the legacy ties that do work hit surprisingly well. Take William Donloe (Rolf Saxon), the CIA analyst from the 1996 “Mission: Impossible” film who got scapegoated after Ethan’s iconic Langley heist. Here, he’s been banished to a sonar outpost in Alaska, now living a modest, off-grid life with his wife, Tapeesa (Lucy Tulugarjuk). Not only is he essential to the mission’s success, but the film actually gives him room to breathe. It’s a small redemption arc, played with humility and laced with irony, and McQuarrie lets it land.
“We live and die in the shadows for those we hold close…and those we’ll never meet”
Tulugarjuk, too, brings warmth and levity in a film sorely in need of it. She’s not there for tokenism either. Tapeesa is a vibrant presence, essential to the mission and surprisingly funny. In fact, she steals scenes with her calm, grounded demeanor. It’s a rare thing in a film where most people seem to be shooting or sprinting.
Elsewhere, Grace solidifies her place as the series’ future, whether it continues or not. Atwell makes her slippery ex-thief into a full-fledged IMF player, and her scenes carry some of the spark that other character interactions lack. And while the film doesn’t give the other characters much new ground to cover, Rhames’ Luther gets the most of the film’s plot, developing an ‘antidote’ that would serve as a virus to neutralize the Entity’s power and giving Ethan the motivation that he needs to keep going.
What Comes After the Jump?
The Brian De Palma nods (Dutch angles, tight paranoia) and John Woo echoes (gun fu, carnage) are laid on thick, sometimes excessively. But they serve a purpose: this isn’t just a finale, it’s a full-franchise reckoning. Even Kittridge (Henry Czerny) hammers it home, telling Hunt, “Everything you were, everything you’ve done, has come to this.” It’s a line that flirts with parody, but lands just enough to sting.
So what is “this,” exactly? In ‘The Final Reckoning’, it’s consequences. For all his impossible feats, Ethan’s real superpower has always been refusing to sacrifice anyone. From saving Julia over the Rabbit’s Foot in ‘M:I III’, to surrendering plutonium cores to rescue Luther in ‘Fallout’, he has always chosen people over protocol.
Now, those choices circle back. Luther’s line—“We live and die in the shadows for those we hold close…and those we’ll never meet”—isn’t just poignant; it’s the clearest expression of what Hunt’s been fighting for all along. The film, for all its overreach, pauses long enough to say: this is what it was about.
The logic sometimes cracks. The pacing gasps for breath. But what holds ‘The Final Reckoning’ together is its willingness to show Hunt not as a savior, but as a man haunted by the lives he couldn’t save, and driven by the slim hope of saving just one more. That’s not spectacle. That’s purpose.
‘The Final Reckoning’ as a Culmination—or Ellipsis
I think ultimately, ‘The Final Reckoning’ wants to be a culmination, a final word not just on Hunt, but on the choices that have defined him across eight films. It loops in threads from the more neglected entries, cleverly retconning meaning into old loose ends. But underneath it all is the film’s guiding obsession: control. Hunt’s story is framed less by heroism than by the consequences of what he couldn’t save, who he couldn’t protect, and what he left behind. But if this aims to be the grand summation of Ethan Hunt’s legacy, it’s oddly non-committal. The film wobbles between an ending and a soft reboot. It gestures toward closure but never fully commits. The ending doesn’t land like a period; it drifts off like an ellipsis.
‘The Final Reckoning’ also struggles under the shadow of other franchise swan songs. Daniel Craig’s “No Time to Die” showed how to close the curtain with stakes, heart, and finality. By contrast, this film hedges, wanting to be both a conclusion and a springboard. Emotional beats come with no real payoff, and the third act feels choppy and oddly weightless.
Still, if you forgive its indulgences—and you should—it becomes something rare for a modern blockbuster: a wild, wounded action epic that allows its hero to falter and feel. Like Craig’s Bond, Cruise’s Hunt is staring down time itself. He may still run like hell, but ‘The Final Reckoning’ knows he won’t outrun it forever.
A Fitting Swansong to Tom Cruise, If It Ever Is
The ending leaves things open just enough, but the tone is elegiac. If this is the end for Ethan Hunt—and it certainly feels like it—it’s a bold, occasionally bloated, but ultimately fitting farewell. Yes, the plot drags. Yes, the exposition is relentless. But when Cruise, breathless and bloodied, jumps out of a doomed aircraft with the fate of the world literally in his hands, you remember why you showed up in the first place.
So yes, “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning” over-explains, overreaches, and overstays. But when it moves—when it trusts its silent beats and breathless visuals—it reminds you what it’s like to be truly swept away by blockbuster filmmaking. And if this really is Hunt’s last mission, it’s a farewell that stumbles and soars in equal measure: bloated, brave, a little breathless, and entirely on brand.
“Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning” will be released in the United States on May 23. Follow us for more coverage.
