Movie Review – Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning

Director: Christopher McQuarrie
Starring: Tom Cruise, Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg
Year: 2025

Tom Cruise is 62 years old and he did all his own stunts. Again. Still. Because Tom Cruise is not a human being, he’s a dedication engine in human form.

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is the conclusion to the story that started in Dead Reckoning. The AI threat. The Entity. Whatever you want to call the MacGuffin that justifies Tom Cruise throwing himself off things. This movie has him throwing himself off many things. A bridge. A helicopter. A cliff. At least two buildings.

And honestly? The stunts remain incredible. There’s a sequence midway through involving a moving train and a sabotaged railway and it’s genuinely breathtaking. You sit there watching a 62-year-old man do things that would hospitalize people half his age and you can’t look away.

Christopher McQuarrie has been directing these since Rogue Nation and he’s gotten better with each one. He understands that the action needs to be comprehensible. You always know where everyone is. What they’re trying to do. What’s at stake. In an era of shakycam and quick-cut nonsense this is a gift.

The plot is. Look. The plot is fine. It’s there to connect stunts. There’s the AI thing and there’s a conspiracy and there’s a ticking clock and Grace (Hayley Atwell) has to make a choice and Ethan has to sacrifice something and Benji (Simon Pegg) makes jokes and Luther (Ving Rhames) provides support. You’ve seen the template. They execute the template well.

What makes these movies work — and what makes this one work — is the sincerity. Tom Cruise genuinely believes in this stuff. He believes in practical stunts, in entertaining audiences, in the craft of blockbuster filmmaking. You can feel it radiating off the screen. This isn’t a cynical cash grab. This is a guy who loves making movies and happens to be willing to risk his life for them.

My complaints. The runtime is long. Over two and a half hours. There’s a section in the middle that drags. The villain remains kind of abstract — fighting an AI doesn’t have the same punch as fighting a person. And the emotional beats feel somewhat obligatory rather than earned.

But when the movie is cooking — and it’s cooking for most of its runtime — nothing else in blockbuster cinema comes close. This is what action movies can be when you commit to them fully. When you refuse to take shortcuts. When you do the thing instead of pretending to do the thing.

Tom Cruise is insane and I respect it.

My rating: ★★★★☆

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning on IMDb | Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning on Rotten Tomatoes