I’ll admit it: I went into Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning (yes, that’s the actual title) with low expectations. The last one, Dead Reckoning Part One, was good but bloated. It felt like a setup for a payoff that never came. Plus, Tom Cruise is now 63 years old. How many more times can he run dramatically through foreign cities? But then I saw the opening sequence—a 15-minute chase through the streets of Dubai involving a motorcycle, a helicopter, and what I think was a camel—and I forgot all my skepticism. This movie is insane. And I mean that as the highest compliment.
The plot, for what it’s worth, picks up right where Part One left off. The Entity (an AI villain that’s basically Skynet if it had a British accent) is loose, Ethan Hunt is on the run, and the world is about to end unless he can find a key hidden in a submarine that exploded three movies ago. It’s convoluted, sure. But the movie knows it. Characters literally say things like, “I don’t understand the plan, but I trust you.” It’s self-aware enough that you stop caring about plot holes and just enjoy the ride.
The Stunts: How Does He Keep Doing This?
The headline stunt for this movie is a sequence where Cruise’s character jumps from a plane flying at 15,000 feet—without a parachute—into a moving train. I’ve seen the behind-the-scenes featurette. It’s real. He did it six times over three days. The result is one of the most harrowing action scenes I’ve ever seen in a theater. You feel the wind. You feel the impact. My palms were sweating. But it’s not just that one stunt. There’s a fight on top of a speeding bullet train in Japan, a chase through the canals of Venice on a jet ski, and a finale in an underwater cave that involves holding your breath for what feels like five minutes. Cruise is clearly insane in the best way. He’s the last of a dying breed—a movie star who actually does his own stunts. It makes every other action movie look fake by comparison.
The Cast: Hayley Atwell Steals the Show
I was skeptical when Hayley Atwell joined the franchise in the last movie. Her character, Grace, was a thief who spent most of the film being rescued. But in The Final Reckoning, she’s fully an agent. She has her own fight scenes—including a brutal hand-to-hand combat sequence in a moving elevator—and she holds her own against Cruise. There’s a moment where she and Ethan are trapped in a room filling with water, and she’s the one who figures out the escape. It’s a small thing, but it signals that the franchise is finally treating its female characters as equals, not damsels. Vanessa Kirby returns as the White Widow, and she gets more screen time this time. Her character is a morally gray arms dealer who might be the smartest person in the room. Esai Morales is the villain, and he’s fine—menacing but forgettable. The real MVP is Simon Pegg as Benji, who gets most of the comic relief but also a genuinely touching scene where he admits he’s scared of dying.
Too Long? Not Really
The runtime is 2 hours and 45 minutes, which sounds excessive. But the pacing is relentless. There’s no boring middle section where characters talk about their feelings. Every 20 minutes, something explodes. The only part that dragged for me was the third act, which has about four different “fake endings.” At a certain point, I was thinking, “Okay, but is it over?” It’s a common problem with ‘final’ movies—they want to give everyone a satisfying send-off, so they keep adding epilogues. But the final final scene—Ethan Hunt walking away from the camera into a sunset—is earned. I won’t spoil it, but it made me emotional.
Is It the Best Mission: Impossible?
I’d rank it below Fallout (2018) but above the rest. Fallout had a cleaner story and a more iconic villain. The Final Reckoning is messier, but it’s also funnier and more emotional. It feels like a victory lap for Cruise and director Christopher McQuarrie. If this is really the end of Ethan Hunt’s story, it’s a good ending. I left the theater feeling exhausted, exhilarated, and oddly hopeful. In a world of CGI sludge and superhero burnout, Mission: Impossible reminds us that practical stunts and real human effort still matter. Go see it on the biggest screen you can find. You won’t regret it.
