PREMISE
Ethan Hunt and his IMF team unite to prevent the Entity, a rogue AI, from unleashing global destruction against humanity.
THE GOOD STUFF
ETHAN HUNT- You know, there was a point in time during the first TWO MISSION IMPOSSIBLE movies, where it seemed as if the good people at Paramount Studios were trying to turn Ethan Hunt into their version of James Bond. Then, in the third film, it seemed as if they wanted him to be a character who was a family man by day and an action hero by night. And ultimately they came to the resolution that he needed to be a legitimately great person who escaped death and kicked ass (both at an astronomical rate) without any real character depth… and here we are. Wise choice.
At the beginning of this movie, a montage is shown highlighting the character’s savage behavior over the last 30 years, as Holt McCallany’s character reads off his highlights in the style of a sports reporter describing a Hall of Fame athlete’s career. It’s a perfect introduction to this character and a great thing to have in your head as this character continues to do more incredibly badass things.
THE SUBMARINE SEQUENCE- The second act of this movie is capped off by an extremely intense scene inside a submarine. The buildup going into the execution of the scene is all the more incredible because the audience knows that Ethan Hunt is going to survive it. At what cost, who knows?
(You know he’s not going to die at the hour and a half mark of a 2 hour and 45 minute movie)
And yet the tension that this racks up is impressive. As the sequence goes along, there’s just more and more crazy s*** that happens to add to the impossibility of the mission itself (pun intended), and it really does stick the landing towards the end.
This is one of the very best action sequences in this franchise, and that is saying something.
THE PLANE SEQUENCE- The greatness in the submarine scene derives a lot from the tension that the storytelling builds up until that point. The greatness of the show-closing airplane sequence (which is featured on the posters of this film) comes from a technical standpoint more than anything else.
This is an idyllic, conceptually creative, “How-the-f***-did-they-get-that-shot?”, “Cruise-really-is-a-f******-mad-man-for-doing-s***-like-this” kind of sequence that made the audience I watched this with roar with applause.
This is ALSO one of the best action sequences in the history of the franchise, and a sequence that really REALLY pops in a large format theater.
THE CALLBACKS (THE GOOD STUFF)- I appreciate the fact that they didn’t try to forcefully recap the entire series through this singular film, just because it’s the finale. They picked and chose which elements of past films needed to be incorporated here to enhance the story leading up to the finale, and it’s expertly done. The elements that they chose from the first three flicks to call back on are spot-on with what the story needed, and made things more engrossing.
THE BAD STUFF
THE CALLBACKS (THE BAD STUFF)- This film has a running time of one hundred and sixty f****** seven minutes. About 45 of those minutes are spent on a first act that seems to be focused on reaching that small, tiny section of the audience who has not seen the previous film in this series, MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: DEAD RECKONING. For some reason, the rest of us are being told yet again what the key does, where the ships are, and a thorough explanation of what the entity is capable of… again.
I would understand if six or seven years were separating the last movie from this one, but there isn’t. We could have easily saved ourselves 30 solid minutes of runtime. There are so many different ways to reshape the first act of this movie into a more efficient part of the film.
GABE USAGE- The one element that makes this film less than its predecessor is the usage of Esai Morales as the villain of the movie, Gabriel. Mind you, he’s in it plenty, but not nearly as much as the first one. The franchise has had this issue of having some boring ass villains, and Gabriel certainly wasn’t that.
He has a very “final boss” like feel, and that continues throughout this film. A part of me feels that the key element of this story may have been the history between Ethan and Gabriel, in order for things to be a little more interesting. However, I understand the approach they took.
THE UGLY STUFF
THE NIGHTCRAWLER CONUNDRUM- Try to follow me here, as I want to discuss this without spoiling anything, and I’ll speak in code for a bit….Hopefully, this will make sense.
Once upon a time, there was a movie called X2: X-MEN UNITED. It is the second X-Men movie, released in 2002. In that movie was the portrayal of a character named Nightcrawler, played by Alan Cumming. Nightcrawler was one of the very best characters in the entire film. Anybody who watched X2 would admit this. Even after Fox Studios made their final X-Men film, people were still wondering what happened to Nightcrawler. Because after X2….they never showed or mentioned him ever again.
Welp, MISSION IMPOSSIBLE as a franchise has this same Nightcrawler-ish conundrum. There was an awesome character that was HEAVILY featured in earlier iterations of this series with the same Nightcrawler-ish “WHERE THE F*** IS _______” conclusion. Because of this, I can only like this movie so much. I want to enjoy it more, but I simply cannot because of this unfortunate bull****.
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Mission: Impossible- Final Reckoning takes a couple of steps back from what the previous entry of this franchise was, but the action is just so consistently impressive that it would be a lie to say that it was subpar in comparison to any other action film that’s come out in 2025.
Sure, it could have been a lot more efficient in its execution, but this is a fantastic film to see in a premium format theater, it is an impressive way to cap off this franchise, and when you think of all the finales to long-going film franchises, there aren’t many that match up with this one.
MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: FINAL RECKONING is in theaters now
