Review: Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning (2025)

Not too long ago, I heard an interview with Oscar-nominated filmmaker James Mangold in which he described "plot" as the enemy of storytelling. Of course, plot is required in any story, but Mangold explains that it can also be a barrier to exploring the characters, their motivations, and their relationships. You want your story to have just enough plot to give your characters momentum, then to stay out of the way and let your characters thrive. Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning contains so much plot that frequently draws the story to a complete and total halt. The first major action scene in the movie occurs at close to the 90-minute mark. In the entire 169 minute film, there are two major action scenes and two big set pieces--one on a submarine, and another with prop planes. The rest of the movie--the other half--is simply characters running from point A to point B and then delivering exposition when they get there. You see, in order to stop something terrible from happening, they have to go to the place and find a thing, and once they have the thing, they will know how to get to the next place to get the next thing, and so on. When you remove the location hopping and obtuse dialogue about keys and destinations, half the movie falls away. 

What's left is occasionally compelling, but the core problem with The Final Reckoning is that we, the audience, have no reason to care about any of it. This franchise, which started on television nearly 60 years ago, and which has been a staple of popcorn cinema in theaters for almost 30 years, was often defined by a threat to the United States security; the brave agents of the IMF team would put their lives on the line for their country. Now, because superheroes dominate the box office, the Mission: Impossible movies have evolved into comic book shenanigans with science fiction plots, larger-than-life villains, and a threat that goes beyond national security and involves the very survival of the human race. Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt character, once a rebellious maverick, has become a comic book hero who can achieve superhuman feats. In other words, when the threat becomes so macro that these movies lose their humanity, they become like everything else: just another escapist adventure that is quickly forgotten as soon as we leave the theater. 

There are things to like about the film. The scale is large (the movie reportedly cost upwards of $400 million dollars) and, as such, it's a beautiful spectacle when it's working. Tom Cruise, now in his sixties, can still anchor an action movie like few others. The cinematography is frequently lush and captivating. When the action scenes and major set pieces occur, they're breathtaking and define the "white knuckle" experience. 

Unfortunately, the movie has major story issues. Now, I understand that the audience isn't going to this movie for story, and that when characters deliver pages of nonsensical dialogue about entities and anti-god intelligence and dingle-hoppers that can shut down the wiggle-wump to prevent extermination of the blah blah blah, they do it with such conviction that we take it in stride as being very important. We have no idea what it all means (it means nothing), but we nod in understanding because the lines sound significant. The movie is absolutely choking with this kind of word salad, and the narrative is so over-burdened with it that there's a risk of going cross-eyed from trying to follow the dozens of names, places, and events that get thrown at us quickly in an attempt to make the movie feel important. The script presents the illusion of being action packed, but really, almost all of the major action occurs in the last half. The final act is so unrelenting, though, that we seem to forget the 90 pages of dialogue that came before. 

Much press and discussion has once again been given to Tom Cruise doing his own stunts, as if this somehow elevates the movie or makes it a better narrative. It doesn't, and while the sight of Tom Cruise hanging off a plane is certainly a memorable image, it doesn't make this movie any better. I was there at the beginning of this film franchise, in theaters during the summer of 1996 when the first Mission: Impossible film hit screens. There was nothing else like it, balancing international locations with fast action and a thinking man's plot. Now there are lots of things like Mission: Impossible, and there has undeniably been a decline as this franchise has been trotted out over and over again. The Final Reckoning not only coasts on our own nostalgia for the series, but also makes the same mistake as the most recent James Bond film (another long-in-the-tooth franchise) by trying to retroactively connect every movie before it into some sort of cohesive master plan from the villain. "It's all been leading up to this," they say. "Every step you've taken has led you here. I am the architect of your downfall." Except there was no long-term plan, and any attempt to connect three decades of disparate films  into a cohesive overarching plot that carries through all the entries is bound to fall flat. The filmmakers, chiefly writer/director Christopher McQuarrie (writer of The Usual Suspects), are simply hoping we're so distracted by all the mumbo jumbo and crazy spectacle that we don't notice. 

Sidebar: a recent blurb is making the rounds on social media in which Christopher McQuarrie says he has the plot for Top Gun 3 all figured out and that "it was easy." Well, if the screenplay for The Final Reckoning is any indication, maybe he better slow down and try a little harder. 

It's hard to imagine a Mission: Impossible movie, especially one of this scope and magnitude, not reigning as the king of the box office during its opening weekend, and yet here we are with this film being summarily outgrossed by a live-action Disney remake, which made three times the box office of this ultimate Ethan Hunt adventure. Has the audience finally had their fill of Tom Cruise? Time will tell. 

Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning is tediously long and overstuffed, relying on comic book movie tropes and nonsensical exposition in place of character development and genuine pathos. Especially when compared to where this film franchise began in 1996, it all but collapses under its own weight.