‘Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning’ Review: Tom Cruise Takes Ethan Hunt to the Ends of the Earth and Back

“Our lives are the sum of our choices.” Though the words were first said to Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt in the penultimate quest, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, they continue to echo as he faces his most consequential challenge. For a franchise where choice has always been an essential part of the plan, the sum of Ethan Hunt’s choices has brought the world to the brink of annihilation when Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning begins.

First introduced in 1996 as an adaptation of the television series of the same name, Ethan Hunt was part of a team tasked with rooting out a mole that had infiltrated the Impossible Mission Force, a supersecret, clandestine spy service with less oversight or accountability than the CIA. It was unclear how long Ethan had been with the IMF at the time of the first film, but the events that introduced him – particularly losing his entire team in an act of sabotage – would continue to shape his character for the next thirty years.

The Final Reckoning picks up two months after Ethan narrowly escaped arrest on the derailed Orient Express in Austria. He has retreated into the shadows while society edges closer to collapse. The Entity, a sentient AI villain, has accessed every corner of the world’s information, wealth, and energy, digitally altering the past, present, and future in the growing war over truth. The Entity is now just days away from controlling every nuclear arsenal on the planet as, one by one, India, Pakistan, and France succumb to the digital parasite’s usurpation.

In the beginning of the maybe-final Mission, the Entity’s reach and scale are brought to life in fragments of remembered dialog and vague images through its creepy, blue, all-seeing eye. The design of the eye itself resembles an icier, more modern combination of the Eye of Sauron, the Matrix, and Demon Seed’s Proteus, while also feeling like something uniquely sinister. Introducing sentient artificial intelligence into the Mission: Impossible story was a risky and unexpected move when Dead Reckoning hit theaters two years ago, even for a franchise where each film gets bigger than the last. It is the closest the films have gotten to addressing real threats in our real world. Even if artificial intelligence cannot become a truly sentient enemy, the real danger we face with our dependence on machines is already happening. With all the knowledge humans have had available to us anytime we want it, we aren’t getting smarter. We’re getting to be more addicted, more easy to control. In the opening scene, simple, fragmented bits of computer code hypnotically dance around the screen while the Entity beguiles us with bits of major political speeches from world leaders and personal phone calls between regular people, showing that this villain is as interested in controlling global events as it is in controlling the individual humans involved.

With an artificial intelligence that can gain control of any digital device from a smartwatch to a government supercomputer, Ethan has been hiding in the darkness of analog, forced to find more primitive ways to communicate with his team. Someone has passed him a message via VHS tape, a communication from former CIA director/current President of the United States, Erika Sloane (Angela Bassett). IMF operations have always been far removed from the executive branch, so a message from the president herself is enough to convey the gravity of the crisis at hand. Sloane appeals to Ethan’s heroism, praising his years of sacrifice and service. “Though you never followed orders,” she says, “you never let us down.”

Then the president delivers the first of several exposition-heavy monologues that delay the heart-pounding, propulsive thrills yet to come. She explains that disinformation has become the Entity’s weapon to bring humanity to submission. No one knows who or what to trust anymore and truth – if it still exists – is a sticky web of logical fallacies, confirmation bias, and echo chambers. The chaos has given rise to a Doomsday cult, protests, and panic as the Entity makes its final moves to take complete control of the planet. What it hopes to gain by doing so is left to speculation, though the danger it poses is very real. Sloane begs Ethan not to destroy the Entity, but instead to hand over control to the US government, the only organization she trusts to use it right.

Tom Cruise brings all thirty years of Ethan’s history, anxieties, and resourcefulness to his latest globe-trotting adventure. The stunts are even bigger than advertised, delivering the sort of breathtaking excitement seen in other popular action adventure flicks from Raiders of the Lost Ark to Jurassic Park. Cruise is not only one of the world’s last movie stars, he is also one of the last true action stars too. Whether it is a treacherous dive into a sunken submarine or the wings of a biplane high above a green valley, he makes the impossible look possible, and so much fun to watch.

But before Ethan can get to the action, he has to reassemble his team and the audience needs some more exposition. We learn more about the Sebastopol, the Russian submarine that sank itself at the beginning of Dead Reckoning, and a previously unidentified MacGuffin is finally identified. There is also Gabriel (Esai Morales), the dark figure from Ethan’s past who wants dominion over the Entity and believes he can force Ethan to bring him the key.

At nearly three hours, The Final Reckoning is the longest of the Mission films, and takes the longest to get going. For most of the first hour, information is slowly parsed out as if they have plenty of time. Then suddenly, for another two hours it is a non-stop race to the end. The Entity and Gabriel were introduced in the previous film as the biggest, toughest villains Ethan has ever faced. And yet both, despite being omnipresent threats, take a backseat to the real danger: the ticking clock. With only three days to complete this most impossible of missions, we spend almost no time with the bad guys themselves, or with the consequences of their actions. Early on, Ethan moves through a crowd of rival protesters screaming at each other, but why? What are they fighting over? How does this looming threat affect those who aren’t part of the grid? The ones who are disconnected and unaware of what is happening in the world. 

Director Christopher McQuarrie teamed up with co-writer Erik Jendresen on both Reckoning scripts, and though the storytelling may sometimes lack the intrigue of earlier installments, The Final Reckoning is nearly everything an explosive summer blockbuster should be. The Entity is getting bigger and stronger, but Ethan’s team is too. With his final mission in hand, he gathers his players. Benji (Simon Pegg) gets the chance to step up as a leader, something he never would have imagined years ago while riding a desk at Langley. In the short time since the events of the last film, Grace (Haley Atwell) has gone from wide-eyed potential recruit to a rookie agent who is still terrified but up for anything. She also adds needed doses of levity, whether learning to drive a dog sled or weighing in on the long-running debate over Ethan’s hair. And then there is his most trusted friend Luther (Ving Rhames), the ultimate computer genius who is likely the only man smart enough to develop a tool that could help them win a fight against an actual computer.

Along the way, they also collect Paris (Pom Klementieff), a previous Gabriel disciple who he left for dead when he thought she would betray him. One of the complaints of Klementieff’s first foray into the franchise was that she was underutilized. Sadly, she doesn’t get much more to do the second time around, although she does get more (and funnier) dialogue. Greg Tarzan Davis returns as Degas, one of the agents who was after Ethan and whose presence here is welcome but unclear. And then we have the long-awaited return of William Donloe (Rolf Saxon), the black box operator sent to man a radar tower in Alaska after Ethan broke into the CIA headquarters in 1996.

Shea Whigham also returns as Jasper Briggs, one of the agents who has been trying to track Ethan down. Whigham is a good actor and a fun presence, but some revealed backstory about him becomes an unnecessary effort to create a full circle moment that can’t provide any more emotional heft than we have already felt in Ethan’s interactions with others.

In addition to the main crew, there are many familiar faces including Nick Offerman, Katy O’Brian, Tramell Tillman, Janet McTeer, Holt McCallany, and Hannah Waddingham. In such a huge cast it can be easy for some characters to be shoved to the sidelines or lost in a sea of names, yet every one of them gets to play at least some important part in the larger story. Along the way, each is faced with a choice, one that will help or hinder the mission. We can feel the weight of their decisions, the fear of getting it wrong. Each one adds to the sense of connection between people and the strength of humanity when we all band together for one purpose.

But, as with any Mission: Impossible movie, the real stars are the craft teams who have assembled another technical marvel. Impeccable sound design heightens the suffocating depths of the Bering Sea and the uncomfortable silence of a tense war room. Cinematographer Fraser Taggart is such a genius with underwater lighting that the much-touted diving sequence alone is worth the price of an IMAX ticket. Descending into the underwater graveyard of a sunken submarine, Taggart’s images are at once majestic and claustrophobic. And he is as brilliant with open spaces too, inviting the viewer onto the deck of an aircraft carrier, through the tightly packed streets of London, and across the green and mountainous landscape of South Africa. 

Despite some choppy, odd flashbacks, and a slow beginning, once things start moving, McQuarrie and film editor Eddie Hamilton (Oscar-nominated for Top Gun: Maverick) never slow down as Ethan finds himself in a spiraling series of unfortunate events: knife attacks, not one but two timed nuclear bombs, a nearly naked plunge into the frozen ocean, a leap from a plane with a burning parachute. We’ve come to expect as much from these movies, the craziest situations that could seem ridiculous in less capable hands somehow feel completely plausible in Ethan Hunt’s world.

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is explosive and exciting with a good mix of humor and heart. It may not reach the heights of some of its predecessors, but if this is really the end, it is a worthy finale to one of the best spy/action franchises ever made. 

Grade: B+

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning will be released in theaters on May 23 by Paramount Pictures.