Movie Review - Paramount's Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning

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Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning is a 2025 spy action film directed by Christopher McQuarrie, written by Christopher McQuarrie and Erik Jendresen, produced by Paramount Pictures, Skydance, and TC Productions, and distributed by Paramount Pictures. It is based off of CBS's 1966 TV series, Mission: Impossible. The film stars Tom Cruise and Hayley Atwell. This is the eighth film in the Mission: Impossible franchise. It was preceded by Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning.

"I need you to trust me one last time." - Ethan Hunt

Plot

With the artificial intelligence known as The Entity infecting every known corner of the world, it's only a matter of time before it takes control of every nuclear arsenal on the planet. With the doomsday clock ticking, Ethan Hunt must gather his team for one final mission...where this time, it may not work out this time.

The Sweet

I'm a little bit late on Final Reckoning, but this was still one of my most anticipated movies of the year. I just had trouble finding time to get out and see it, but I finally did on Thursday.

And, while it was one of my most anticipated films of the year, it didn't get the universal acclaim that I expected. Starting with Ghost Protocol (which came out in 2011), every single Mission: Impossible movie has received over a 90% on Rotten Tomatoes. That is a ridiculous track record, and Final Reckoning was the first one since Ghost Protocol to land under that number. And I don't understand why, because I think this is one of the best films in the franchise.

Final Reckoning is a truly epic experience. It feels like they pulled out all the stops on this one: it's almost three hours long, the stakes have never been higher, the action set pieces have never been bigger, the cast is enormous...everything just feels epic. The Mission: Impossible movies have gotten bigger and bolder as the series has gone along, and this movie feels like the ultimate culmination of that. It's just gigantic in the best way possible.

One of the things that this franchise has sometimes struggled with is establishing a sense of true, meaningful stakes. Oftentimes, the stakes feel superficially big without holding any actual weight to them. A few of the Mission: Impossible movies have world-threatening stakes, but none of them hold a candle to the danger and impending sense of doom you feel throughout all of Final Reckoning. This is partly helped out by the fact that Dead Reckoning set all of this in motion, but Final Reckoning is able to give you a quick reminder of the threat and show you all of the ways that the world is brimming on the brink of collapse. It makes you understand the weight of Ethan's mission and the dire consequences that will follow if he fails.

And, because of that, this is the most intense and thrilling mission yet. From the beginning of the movie, you are on the edge of your seat. Your heart rate will slowly increase throughout the entire film. It just sucks you into this massive, terrifying threat and shows the massive obstacles that our heroes must overcome to defeat it. Almost every sequence feels like it's going to end with the annihilation of the world, and that just makes it so intense and so magnetic.

This movie also does a really great job of pulling the franchise together. There are connections to the first Mission: Impossible and Mission: Impossible III that I did not see coming at all, but I really appreciated. One of the things that I've always criticized this franchise for is feeling each movie is a self-contained story with Ethan and Luther being the only consistent characters. The filmmakers began to rectify that once Ghost Protocol and Rogue Nation began having recurring characters besides Ethan and Luther, but it's nice to see Final Reckoning connect back to the other, earlier movies in this franchise. It makes this truly feel like the grand finale that it might be.

And, of course, it's a Mission: Impossible movie, so you have to talk about the action and stunts. There are two sequences that standout in particular here. The first is the submarine sequence, which was not significantly marketed and was a huge surprise. This is one of the most intense and gripping set pieces in the entire franchise. It was this ten-minute roller coaster ride of holding your breath as Ethan nearly dies every five seconds, and it was absolutely exhilarating. Seeing it in a theater only gave it an added bonus. And the second sequence was, of course, the big final plane stunt. We've seen Ethan Hunt hang off the side of a plane in Rogue Nation, but this is that stunt on crack. Tom Cruise just went bananas with the insane things that he does while this plane is in the air, and it is an absolute joy to watch.

I also really enjoyed all of our side characters here. I am still not a fan of how they killed Ilsa off in Dead Reckoning, but I think Grace serves as a really good replacement to her. Hayley Atwell is very charming and her chemistry with Tom Cruise proves to be (almost) as good as Rebecca Ferguson's was. She has a few standout moments, but it's not just her. Benji gets a few great moments, especially near the end. Paris, Pom Klementieff's character, was a nice addition to the team. Donloe, the Black Vault guy from the first movie, was one of the most lovable and surprising characters in this film. Mission: Impossible just knows how to craft compelling, likable characters that you want to root for.

On top of that, this movie has an all-star cast. Now, I know that doesn't seem like I'm saying much, but it's a bit more under the radar then you would expect. I'm not talking about Tom Cruise and Hayley Atwell and Simon Pegg. I'm talking about these new side additions that are just great actors from all corners of Hollywood. The dad from Iron Claw is in this, and he's tons of fun. Janet McTeer of future Harry Potter fame and Nick Offerman make appearances in here, and they are just fantastic additions. Hannah Waddingham, Rebecca from Ted Lasso, has a role for, like, ten minutes, but she's awesome.

And the best? Tramell Tillman, Mr. Milchick from Severance. I have never seen Tramell Tillman in anything else besides Severance, but he is the best part of that show. He is the best actor and he plays the best character. And he gets a paper thin submarine captain here...who he injects so much personality and charm into. He's sarcastic. He's funny. He comes off as intimidating, but then disarms you with this insane charisma. He's in this movie for maybe fifteen minutes, and he steals the show from Tom frickin' Cruise. I need to see this guy in more stuff, because he is an absolutely incredible actor.

I also thought that this movie does a really good job at building tension within individual sequences. The movie is very exposition-heavy (which we will get to later), but this helps the audience understand the exact objective for each sequence. It feels like we know exactly what needs to happen and how it can all go wrong in every single moment, and the odds always feel impossible. This movie really puts the impossible in Mission: Impossible, because every single scene, you are just asking yourself "How is Ethan going to get through this?" And it is always awesome to watch.

This movie also works as a satisfying ending to the franchise if this is truly our last mission. It chooses a very non-committal ending, but I think that's okay. I would be happy with more Mission: Impossible, but if this is where we end things, I think it's a good ending. The movie did a nice job of leaving the door open for more IMF adventures. There's a point in time where they could've picked an ending that would've solidified this as the last Mission: Impossible, but I'm glad they avoided doing that, because it would've felt unsatisfying and somewhat forced.

The Sour

This, while great, is a very flawed movie.

The first hour of Final Reckoning sets up a really awesome last two hours, but it is so filled with setup and exposition that it just makes it frustrating. It feels like the movie just continuously flashes back to previous clips from previous movies to make sure that the audience understands what's happening, and I found that to be slightly unnecessary. Although I loved connecting this to the other movies in the franchise, it felt like they overdid that a little bit, and therefore dragged the entire first act down.

I also was pretty mixed on what they did with Luther here. Luther is one of my personal favorite characters in the franchise, and I think they gave him an interesting but confusing role in this movie. They have these consistent flashbacks that reveal something important that he was doing, but it felt like a very strange way to reveal this information. The thing he is doing is vital to understand the goal of the movie, and they should've just told us what it was rather than teasing it through flashbacks and eventually revealing it.

This movie probably also has some of the weakest villains in the entire franchise. I actually think that the Entity is a very interesting villain that works as this global threat, and, in Dead Reckoning, I thought it worked to use Gabriel as essentially the human face of the Entity. However, Final Reckoning does something different with both the Entity and Gabriel, and, while I think it made the Entity feel more threatening, it made Gabriel a really terrible villain. Esai Morales gave a bit of an insane performance and the character felt like he just devolved into a mustache-twirling psychopath, which was a sharp change from his calm, collected nature in Dead Reckoning.

Finally, I think the movie gets too convoluted at times. This film demands a lot of you. The mission is complicated, the plans to save the world are complicated, the insane technology is complicated...there's just a lot going on, and sometimes it's too much. Sometimes they give you too much information in one scene or they over-explain something to a point where it just gets confusing. This is actually a pretty consistent problem with the franchise: I think they sometimes lose focus and just try to make these huge, epic sequences without thinking about how confusing they can sometimes be. But these problems, while they may seem big, don't really drag the movie down that much for me.

Final Thoughts and Score

I had an absolute blast with Final Reckoning. It is epic in every sense of the word, and, convoluted plots and exposition aside, this is just the type of blockbuster for me.

I am going Sweet here. Age range is 12+.

SWEET N' SOUR SCALE

Sweet (Great) Savory (Good) Sour (Bad) Moldy (Terrible)

"Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning"

Fun Factor: 9.5/10

Acting: 8/10

Story: 8/10

Characters: 8/10

Quality: 8.5/10

Directed by Christopher McQuarrie

Rated PG-13 for moderate violence and action, frightening themes and images, language, thematic elements

Released on May 23, 2025

2 hours and 49 minutes

Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt

Hayley Atwell as Grace

Simon Pegg as Benji Dunn

Ving Rhames as Luther Stickell

Esai Morales as Gabriel

Rolf Saxon as William Donloe

Pom Klementieff as Paris

Henry Czerny as Eugene Kittridge

Angela Bassett as Erika Sloane

Janet McTeer as Walters

Nick Offerman as General Sidney

Hannah Waddingham as Rear Admiral Neely

Tramell Tillman as Captain Jack Bledsoe

Shea Wingham as Jasper Briggs

Greg Tarzan Davis as Theo Degas

Charles Parnell as Richards

Lucy Tulugarjuk as Tapeesa

Katy O'Brien as Kodiak

Stephen Oyoung as Pills

Holt McCallany as Serling