Rating of
3.5/4
Saving the Best for... Last?
Chris Kavan - wrote on 05/31/25
It's kind of amazing that it has been nearly 30 years since the original Mission: Impossible debuted on the big screen. But here we are and if (because it never say never) this is the final film in the series, Christopher McQuarrie gives us an action film for the ages - and a great send-off for fans of this franchise.
The Final Reckoning picks up a few months after the events of Dead Reckoning with the program known as The Entity running wild with its own version of reality - complete with its own cult - and it seems its master plan is take over ever nuclear arsenal world-wide and, like Terminator before it, wipe out most of humanity in one fell swoop. Of course we know Ethan Hunt (Tome Cruise) has a plan to stop it - with his long-time partner Luther (Ving Rhames - the only other actor to appear in each Mission: Impossible film) having crafted a "poison pill" that when combined with the original source code of The Entity (currently located on a wrecked Russian sub somewhere in the Arctic Ocean) will destroy it - with the side effect of also taking down all of cyberspace. But it's still better than nuclear annihilation.
Having secured the two-part key in Dead Reckoning needed to unlock the source code, Hunt has a plan and it involved finding his nemesis, Gabriel (Esai Morales). In order to do that, he must first break out the very violent Paris (Pom Klementieff) under the watchful eye of Briggs (Shea Whigham). With the help of Benji (Simons Pegg) and after some very tense moment, he even manages to recruit another partner in the form of Degas (Greg Tarzan Davis), who turns out to be a very useful Swiss Army Knife kind of guy. After pointing him to a high-class party, Hunt runs into master thief Grace (Hayley Atwell) but the reunion is cut short when they find Gabriel is one step ahead of them. Once the main agent of The Entity, Gabriel now finds himself a pariah and instead of working together, now he just wants to control it - and, by extension - the world and knows the only way to do so is for Hunt to do the dirty work for him. And there is collateral damage.
With the world edging closer and closer to all-out nuclear war, President Erika Sloane (Angela Bassett) calls in Hunt and despite trepidation from Kittridge (Henry Czerny), she lets Hunt loose on a plan that requires some rather precise calculations - and a whole lot of luck. Let's just say if Hunt has had nine lives this entire series, he used the last of them up to pull off the most impossible mission yet. He goes from an aircraft carrier to a nuclear sub to a precariously perched Russian wrecked sub to a bi-plane chase - and believe me, this amounts to some of the best action scenes in a series KNOWN for its action scenes.
But Hunt is only on one part of the mission, as the rest of the team has their hands full above the surface - and even run into a very old friend (brought all the way back from the first Mission: Impossible) - and even though you would think such a character would be hard to kind of shoe-horn in, I must say the way they handled this character actually brought some nice emotion to the series.
Of course the most-talked about aspect of this film is the action and it doesn't disappoint in that regard. The ending bi-plane chase has Cruise being flung around and handing on for dear life. While that scene is certainly the standout, seeing Cruise underwater in cramped conditions is also impressive. Plus to have your typical fight scenes, explosions and vehicular mayhem. While this is the longest film in the series, it doesn't waste any of that time. The entire cast is impressive - from the above-named to more supporting roles from Hannah Waddingham, Tramell Tillman and Nick Offerman. Plus they do leave the door open for more - and given the response I would be surprised if they don't try to continue this series (given Cruise's age, however, I see this as a more pass-the-torch to a younger actor... though who could ever match Cruise's determination and absolute insanity when it comes to stunts?). But if this is truly the finale - it does the series justice.
While it's easy to dismiss the Mission: Impossible films as popcorn summer action, I think (especially in the latter films) they do have a bigger message to send. Given the current technological leaps and bounds, it's not hard to see something like The Entity actually coming into play. It may not cause nuclear devastation but it could very easily cloud judgement make determining what is fact and fiction much more challenging. And much like the film - people will do just about anything to control such a world-altering thing. Yes, even action films can hold some deeper meaning if you really want to think about it.
While the nostalgia may be a bit too on-the-nose at times, The Final Reckoning manages to do something many series cannot pull off: come to a satisfying conclusion.
