Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning

The Mission: Impossible franchise has been running, leaping, and dangling from tall things since 1996, when the film series spun off from the classic 1960s TV show. Now, eight films deep, Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning finds Ethan Hunt once again trying to save a world, usually in a full sprint. Back for another round, the enemy this time is an all-powerful AI known as The Entity, which is reshaping geopolitics and reality itself.

As the world teeters on the brink of collapse, a doomsday cult grows in the Entity’s shadow, and no one can tell truth from manipulated fiction. The details are vague, but it feels like a twisted mirror of our own, current world. Unfortunately, we don’t have Ethan Hunt to save us.

It’s a fascinating set up, though you can’t help but feel they are missing some interesting side threads. We don’t really see any of the people or the world that’s supposedly crumbling. There’s no real look at how regular people are falling apart. Other than the odd cult member, humanity presents no real obstacles or inspirations to the IMF team. It’s all very top-level, spy-world.

There are a lot of conversations about friendship and “the people they’ll never meet” that the IMF agents have dedicated their lives to saving. There’s not a lot of characterization and nothing goes too deep. But hey, these are movies built on momentum, not introspection.

And what momentum. Tom Cruise — maybe the last true movie star — is out here trying to rescue not just the world, but cinema itself. He’s joined by the usual suspects: Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, and Haley Atwell, as well as some new faces. (Also, quick sidebar — how is Angela Bassett still somehow 40? Is there a cursed painting of her aging in an attic somewhere?)

The plot, like most spy flicks, is a twisty mess of double-crosses, ancient keys, and world-ending MacGuffins. Don’t worry too much about following it. I can’t explain the convoluted plots of most Bond movies either. What matters is the propulsion: globe-trotting chases, knife fights in tight quarters, and the kind of stunt work that makes your palms sweat.

There’s some clunky flashback work early on — a greatest hits of Ethan’s emotional trauma and mission moments — but thankfully that stuff fades as the movie picks up speed. Still, at nearly three hours, there’s fat that could be trimmed. There are a number of very coincidental characters shoehorned in as call backs that Alfred Hitchcock’s fridge logic would give side eye too. A lot of this would feel shoehorned in and overly coincidental if the movie slowed down enough for you to think about it. But in the moment, it moves fast enough that you don’t care.

There may not be deep emotional resonance, but let’s face it, we’re mostly here for the stunts, which Cruise delivers. Each sequence takes its time, has a beginning, middle, and ending. There were several moments where Ethan or one of the team is in a lot of trouble and your mind knows they’re not killing off Ethan Hunt in the middle of the movie, but they push the tension so close to the limit that you start to question your own confidence in that idea. There’s an amazing bi-plane sequence that’s pure Harold Lloyd chaos. Say what you will about Cruise’s personal life, but the guy commits. His body might be mortal, but his dedication is mythic.

Whether this ends up being the final reckoning remains to be seen, but if this is the last ride, it’s a fitting send-off. It reminds me of John Wick 4: too long, but so crammed with jaw-dropping set pieces, stunts, choreography, and kinetic filmmaking that you forgive the indulgence. These movies go big because they can.

I hate the idea that some films “deserve” to be seen in a theatre and others don’t — every movie benefits from that shared darkness and giant screen. But Dead Reckoning doesn’t just benefit from it — it demands it. Cruise and director Christopher McQuarrie have made a film that practically drags you out of your house and back into the multiplex. If you like these movies, it’s worth the price of popcorn.