Director: Christopher McQuarrie
Writers: Bruce Geller, Erik Jendersen, Christopher McQuarrie
Stars: Tom Cruise, Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames
Synopsis: Our lives are the sum of our choices. Tom Cruise is Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning.
Every entry in the Mission Impossible franchise contains one non-negotiable constant. Beyond the obvious institutions, of course, like Tom Cruise’s presence, a handful of death-defying setpieces – shot and performed practically in accordance with the star’s apparent death wish commitment – a larger handful of Bond girl-esque heroines for Cruise’s Ethan Hunt to woo, save, and occasionally mourn, etc. No, the stalwart pillar of each film, from 1996’s Mission Impossible1 through 2023’s Dead Reckoning, has been a choice, though Hunt has never wavered in his ensuing decision. “Your mission,” a recorded voice from inside a pair of sunglasses, a Jazz record, or the hollowed out pages of Homer’s “The Odyssey” says, “should you choose to accept it…” Perhaps it comes within a few minutes, or within the film’s first hour; either way, Ethan is always presented with an option. The road less traveled, in his case, tends to be the avenue to safety, to life as a ghost, away from Luther (Ving Rhames), Benji (Simon Pegg), and whoever else he’s aligned himself with for the time being. The path he always selects is precisely what has made Mission: Impossible the most consistently exhilarating franchise to grace modern multiplexes, if not since it debuted ‘96, then certainly since 2011’s Ghost Protocol, the Brad Bird-directed fourth film that saw the explosion of the Kremlin, Cruise literally scaling the Burj Khalifa, and somehow the only entry to ever include the words “mission accomplished!” in its physical text.
It’s also what has made its inevitable finale – the conclusion of the Cruise-led era, anyway – that much more anticipated. Couple that excitement with the belated removal of Dead Reckoning’s “Part One” designation, and the picture came into fuller focus: The end was nigh. Despite the (very funny and realistic) jokes that Cruise would continue to make Mission: Impossible films until he died performing one of its insane stunts, getting out while the getting was still good was likely always in the cards for Hollywood’s rebel leader and the de facto savior of the cinematic experience, as to remain Ethan Hunt for the rest of his career likely would have become caricaturistic at some point. Imagining an 80-year-old Cruise2 dangling from the side of the Eiffel Tower is a comical (if not entirely unrealistic) vision, but to have it come to fruition would imply that 1) our nation’s geopolitical relations with other countries were in better standing and, 2) he never actually moved on to the stage of his career where he fully realizes his own reclamation project by making more arthouse films in addition to the franchise fare that he’ll never be able to leave behind.
So it was understandable, and even exciting to a select few, when the title of the eighth Mission: Impossible film was revealed to be The Final Reckoning, seemingly putting the close to Cruise’s Ethan Hunt chapter in writing. To get out while the getting is good, as aforementioned, isn’t necessarily such a bad thing, especially when you look at the fates of other mega-franchises that have frittered away for the better part of a decade in search of their next step(s). With The Final Reckoning, Cruise and his now-longtime collaborator Christopher McQuarrie – who has directed and written every M:I film since 2015’s Rogue Nation – gave themselves the opportunity to gracefully close the door. To send Hunt into retirement, if you will, perhaps on a remote, undiscoverable island, one where he could reunite with his ex-wife, Julia (Michelle Monaghan), or maybe Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson’s character, who fans have long-suspected didn’t actually die in Dead Reckoning), or even Grace (Haley Atwell), who Hunt held more longing, horny gazes with than any other woman in just one film. Benji and Luther would be okay; after all, Ethan disappeared from their orbits before, and while he always returned with a new mission in his pocket, their partnership couldn’t last forever.
The Final Reckoning thus not only serves as, literally, the final reckoning for Ethan Hunt and his Impossible Mission Force, but the final reckoning for this iteration of the Mission: Impossible franchise as a whole. So it’s only fair – if a touch over-indulgent – that the very beginning of The Final Reckoning is chock-full of voiceovers and furiously-montaged clips featuring characters from the franchise’s past, including those of Solomon Lane (Sean Harris), August “John Lark” Walker (Henry Cavill), Alan Hunley (Alec Baldwin) and others, all recounting moments from Ethan’s previous adventures in a way that will seem vague to the less initiated, yet ultimately are just specific enough for obsessives to clock the fact that ensuing near-three hours are, indeed, about to be detail the biggest test of Ethan Hunt’s life. His final mission: Somehow taking down The Entity,a malicious A.I. with world destruction on its sentient mind that was introduced in Dead Reckoning. “Everything you’ve done,” President Erika Sloane (Angela Bassett) tells him in the franchise’s most personal briefing to date, “has given the world another sunrise.” Cue Ethan’s huggy reunion with Benji and Luther, both of whom he has evidently not seen in at least a few weeks since the final moments of the most recent installment, and the description of this film’s very broad stakes: Should Ethan and his team fail to stop The Entity, the world as they know it will end.
That the lead-up to how Hunt and co. will approach this mission of devastating proportions is how The Final Reckoning’s first hefty chunk is spent is nothing if not regrettable, as it tasks various characters with the unfortunate responsibility of delivering grating exposition dumps that feel designed to serve an audience that is glued to a second screen. (Here’s hoping you time your Paramount+ free trial just right.) It’s unexpected, sure, but not in the way that this franchise has made its name. Since McQuarrie took over directing duties – ending a string of one-off Cruise-approved hires 3– each Mission: Impossible film has been singular and whip-smart on its own merits while still remaining referential to its predecessors. The Final Reckoning is the first time McQ’s M:I has felt hamstrung by the unbearable weight of being a film within a franchise. Perhaps that’s due to the burden grand finales tend to be tasked with carrying, or because its own road forward had to be repaved once it shed its direct attachment to Dead Reckoning. Either way, the movie spends so much of its first act (and then some) operating in Part Two mode, thus spoon feeding its audience narrative context that it should already know, that you almost forget you’re watching a movie about a crew that has mastered the art of deception.
This is not to say that it doesn’t look, sound, nor feel like a Mission: Impossible during this time. Ethan Hunt’s big running moment occurs during this span, as do a number of important conversations in large, government-designated meeting rooms, a few unspoilable moments that go directly for the emotional jugular, and a hilarious combat scene in which Grace watches in horror as Ethan brutally dispatches a few enemies. (We know what Ethan can do; not everyone has seen it up close.) It also features a pivotal encounter with The Entity itself, thanks to a perfectly-planned game of cat and mouse that the A.I.’s chief operator, Gabriel (Esai Morales), devised in order for Ethan to come face-to-face with his past, present, and future. But it also includes six or seven separate line readings from Gabriel in which he says the same thing over and over again – “Your choices have led to this, and you can’t win,” or something to that nature – three or four inexplicable mentions of Inuit fisherman, and the big, inane reveal that [redacted] is [redacted’s] [redacted].
There’s something glorious about how overstuffed The Final Reckoning’s first half is with its own lore, just as there is something fascinating about watching its brass force themselves to tie up ends that weren’t even loose to begin with, yet it doesn’t occur in the way we’ve come to expect from the same folks who have made some of the best spy thrillers ever made, not to mention one of the very best films of the 2010s. Maybe that has more to do with outsized expectations, but hey, our lives are the sum of our choices. The choice made here has the film flirting with being an honest-to-God mess to the point of desperation, almost like Cruise, McQuarrie, and the like are desperate to save something that didn’t need saving. (Sound familiar, Ethan?)
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to survive a first hour and change that is so high on its own expositional supply that not even The Entity would bother analyzing the script in its efforts to achieve global destruction. Should you do so, you’ll be met with rewards befitting a journey so taxing that your head spins more than the biplane Hunt hangs from in the film’s oft-teased climax: Thrills aplenty, logic… just enough. Prior to that, we’re introduced to a whole new cast of characters, including Hannah Waddingham’s Admiral Neely, Katy O’Brian’s4 Kodiak, and Tramell Tillman’s5 Captain Bledsoe, all of whom have their own unique rapports with the strange agent who has stumbled onto their aircraft carriers and/or submarines in search of the Sevastopol, the Russian military sub that houses The Entity’s command center, as teased in Dead Reckoning’s opening scene.
The stunt-and-fight-ridden sequences that unfold from here are worth the price of admission alone – and who are we kidding, that’s why you came, isn’t it? – and some of the best practical work that the franchise has pulled off yet, on par with (if not exceeding) the insanity of Fallout’s Halo jump, rooftop-set chase scene, and helicopter duel, as well as the aforementioned Burj Khalifa climb and Dead Reckoning’s motorcycle jump. Cruise’s ever-sincere performances in each M:I film have never been up for questioning, let alone worth much critique given how similar many have suspected the man himself is to the character he plays, but there’s something method about how he embodies Hunt’s fear as he ventures thousands of leagues under the Bering Sea and, later, thousands of feet into the skies above South Africa.
What Benji, Grace, and Paris (Pom Klementieff, practically begging to be the series’ next steward) get up to while Ethan trots the open seas and clouds doing his half of the work to stop The Entity’s powers from launching a global arsenal of nuclear missiles is difficult to discuss while spoiling, but that’s half the fun. Mission: Impossible tends to separate its leader from his trusted confidants for tens of minutes at a time, only for them to reunite in a last-ditch effort to accomplish the job once and for all. And in some ways, The Final Reckoning is no different. How we get there is intercut with a lot of panicked isos of United States military officials stuck in rooms with too many red buttons to push – that we’ve yet to mention Holt McCallany or Nick Offerman’s names should tell you all you need to know about their collective presences here – and it’s hard to know whether or not Fallout, Dead Reckoning, and Top Gun: Maverick editor Eddie Hamilton’s clunky chopping during these stretches has to do more with an overflow of footage to deal with or a surplus of story that Cruise and McQuarrie seem overwhelmed by. But it’s all rounded out nicely, if only because the Mission-making duo never fail to stick their landings. Even with all of the easter eggs 6they’ve saddled themselves with in an attempt to bring *gestures wildly at everything* to a proper close, they even manage to make great use of Bill Donlow (Rolf Saxon), the food poisoning-addled Langley pencil pusher from Brian De Palma’s original M:I offering. (I said the film was messy, I never said it wasn’t surprising.)
For some, getting to this point could be the most impossible mission these films have tasked their viewers with yet, and certainly since the John Woo-ified Mission: Impossible 2, widely considered the worst movie in the franchise if only because it favored maximalist action over any true substance on a character-driven level. It arguably took until Ghost Protocol for the series to find a true footing as a series – 2006’s Mission: Impossible III featured Philip Seymour Hoffman as the dastardly villain Owen Davian, so we can’t be too critical – primarily because that’s when a consistent team began to take shape for Hunt, with Benji and Luther both accepting greater responsibility and power as far as their leader’s safety went. While it spins its wheels in the lead-up to an action-packed finale that Woo and Abrams would be proud of, The Final Reckoning upholds the spirit of each later entry by infusing more heart into its proceedings than any of the previous films combined. We may be one utterance about the importance of “family” away from this feeling more like a Fast & Furious effort than an impossible mission, but the folks calling the shots from this franchise’s command center at least have a sense of how real human beings communicate, fight, and what hijinks ensue as they hurtle towards their fitting ends.
Which is precisely what makes The Final Reckoning’s landing a smooth one despite the turbulent ride it took us to get there. Most early reactions to the film have leaned mixed rather than positive, a response that diehard fans have balked at out of hope for cinema’s most reliable franchise to end on its highest note. That’s not the case, but there’s some level of charm to watching Cruise and McQuarrie actively try to connect so many moments from past films to this new one, even if that means telling a wholly new story gets lost in the shuffle. What can also be true is that the final half of The Final Reckoning is among the most thrilling 90 minutes of the series, a mad dash to save the world – and each other – one last time. The most fitting thing of all, like the oft-mocked cruciform key that accesses The Entity, is that one half is rendered entirely ineffective without the presence of the other. Whether that’s for better or for worse is ultimately your mission, should you… ah, you know the rest.
Grade: B-
- Ethan Hunt receives the primary mission briefing in every film but the first. Jim Phelps (Jon Voight) is the recipient of the initial message – on an airplane cassette tape, disguised as “the cinema of the Ukraine” – while Hunt’s arrives at the end.
↩︎ - Cruise previously indicated that he would like to be making Mission: Impossible films until he is in his 80s, similar to how Harrison Ford continued appearing in Indiana Jones movies until he was well past octogenarian age. ↩︎
- Cruise had a hand in hiring John Woo for M:I 2 (citing a desire for the director to “make it his own”), J.J. Abrams for M:I III (he loved Abrams’ television series Alias), and Brad Bird for Ghost Protocol (because of the heart he brought to his animated works The Iron Giant, The Incredibles, and Ratatouille). ↩︎
- Woefully underused, despite receiving one cheer-worthy moment. ↩︎
- Fans of Apple TV’s Severance are in for a treat once Tillman’s now-trademark inflection rears its glorious, low-timbred head. ↩︎
- Yes, The Rabbit’s Foot plays a pivotal role. The knife from Mission: Impossible, well… ↩︎
