Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is a fitting send-off—for the franchise or at least for Cruise’s Ethan Hunt. It’s packed with fun, slick set pieces, and that classic MI tension. I’ll happily rewatch it (especially for Hayley Atwell, who frankly deserves her own spin-off). But let’s be honest: it’s way too long. At nearly three hours, it drags in parts and could’ve done with a good trim. Still, it’s exciting, confident, and occasionally quite mad—which is exactly what you want from this series. Not perfect, but a strong final(ish) bow. And yes, Cruise still runs like the world depends on it.
The longest in the franchise and it feels it mainly because the first hour is made up of so much poorly written exposition that one starts to be concerned that the film is a misfire. With its plot that warns of AI and has a pop at the internet in general this certainly turns up the ludicrous levels into the red. Indeed the plot is almost secondary to the two huge action set pieces that allow Tom Cruise to up the stunts that he performs to the maximum. Don't get me wrong, for the most part this is cinematically entertaining but it doesn't leave you wanting the gritty thriller vibes that others in the series have kept to the fore, indeed I thought the previous film was sharper. This film carries on where the previous one left off with agent Ethan Hunt refusing to hand over the magic key to his Government despite the President asking personally. Eventually though he agrees to an impossible mission to trap the 'Entity' (a ridiculous name for the villain) and has to marry up two devices. This leads to a quite tense set piece in a sunken submarine and finally to a battle with bi-planes that features prominently in the trailers. The crew from the previous film are back including Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Hayley Atwell and Pom Klementieff. The film lacks a good chase sequence, and scenes of Cruise endlessly running at full pelt don't make up for it. In many ways this is a bit of a disappointment but as it's still an action film that pushes the boundaries. It may say Final in the title and Ethan does get to save the world but you can never know if the temptation for yet another film will be too much. If not it's a fitting ending to this action franchise.