Rating: PG-13 | Runtime: 169 minutes
Release Date: May 23rd, 2025 (USA)
Studio: Paramount Pictures
Director(s): Christopher McQuarrie
Writer(s): Christopher McQuarrie & Erik Jendresen / Bruce Geller (television series)

Are you sure it’s really me?

One might think my initial reaction to the first twenty minutes of this film being a thirty-year exposition dump would be regret for having just rewatched the fourteen-plus hours it recapped. But the opposite is true. It actually made me happy because I knew that level of narrative gymnastics and overly serious line readings all but guaranteed I’d leave Final Reckoning knowing it couldn’t live up to the journey preceding it.

The whole film falls prey to many of the same pitfalls that hamstrung No Time to Die. The same wrong lesson that Hollywood learned from Marvel before its own Cinematic Universe proved itself unsustainable in its desire to hold audiences hostage to its every whim. The Mission: Impossible franchise is fun because of the characters, action, slapstick, and chaos. Why would you then turn that chaos into a grand messianic tapestry that only undercuts any suspense it hopes to build by designating everything from Part III onwards was a plan rather than good moral people who love each other risking their lives for humanity?

The result is the series’ second weakest entry, albeit still entertaining enough to warrant sitting through its three-hour bowtie (unlike Part II, regardless of people trying to say otherwise). How they wink back to the Rabbit’s Foot is insane. How they extend the “Person of Interest” theft from Dead Reckoning only confirms its inferiority. And what is the sense behind that climactic biplane fight? Gabriel has cracked so badly that he doesn’t care he’ll be dead before he can take control of The Entity? Ethan can’t connect the poison pill before discovering whether he’ll survive even though he verbally admitted he was expendable? No suspense at all.

Tramell Tillman and Katy O’Brian are the MVPs. So much fun. Bringing back another surprise OG cast member for closure was a fantastic touch while connecting a current member to an OG in the eleventh hour was not. And was it just me or was that shot at the end panning up to the parachute reveal an intentional nod to the Bad Robot logo animation?

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Tom Cruise plays Ethan Hunt, Pom Klementieff plays Paris, Greg Tarzan Davis plays Degas, Simon Pegg plays Benji Dunn and Hayley Atwell plays Grace in MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – THE FINAL RECKONING; courtesy of Paramount Pictures and Skydance.