Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning review: "Wraps up this spy franchise in spectacular style with Tom Cruise in peak condition, even if its villain lacks terror"

For almost three decades, Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt has made the impossible possible. Ever since he dangled from a wire in a high security vault to retrieve a floppy disk in 1996's Brian De Palma-directed Mission: Impossible, Cruise has bent action cinema to his own will. And so it goes for Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, a film that wraps up this spy franchise in typically spectacular style, showing that Hunt is nigh-on indestructible on land, sea or air.

With this the eighth Mission: Impossible movie, this franchise has, curiously, followed the Harry Potter pattern. Same number of films. A director – in this case Christopher McQuarrie – who has helmed the final four movies. And a last chapter that, in fact, is the second film of a two-part story. Except that here, Dead Reckoning – Part Two, as it was originally called, is now The Final Reckoning, emphasising that this really is it for Ethan Hunt and his fellow IMF spies.

The story picks up from Dead Reckoning in traditional Mission: Impossible style, with Hunt watching a VHS tape (how old school!) with a message from Angela Bassett's U.S. President Erika Sloane. "You never let us down," she intones. "You were always the best of men in the worst of times." Accompanied by a montage of clips from the earlier episodes, it serves as a solid reminder that Hunt is the heart of Mission: Impossible, however much he likes to big up his team.

High stakes

As Dead Reckoning devotees will recall, Hunt and his pals are facing their deadliest enemy yet, an AI program called the Entity, which if let loose will corrupt the world's digital systems, infiltrating law and order, crashing economies and bringing civilization to its knees. Already, a doomsday cult has sprung up around the Entity, as rioters look to rebuild a world that's on the verge of collapse. Of course, only Hunt has the key to saving us, quite literally.

Having obtained the gold cruciform key in the last outing, Hunt must now get to the depths of the Russian submarine, the Sevastopol, that was tricked by the Entity into sinking itself with a torpedo fired from its own arsenal. Inside that sunken wreck is the Entity's source code, the one chance he has to control this AI monster. Help is also at hand from old IMF buddy Luther (Ving Rhames), who has built a "poison pill" to infiltrate the source code and "deceive the lord of lies."

Also back is IMF techie Benji (Simon Pegg), increasingly involved with the action with every passing movie, and Degas (Greg Tarzan Davis), who seems mainly on screen to fire off rounds of ammo. Pickpocket Grace (Haley Atwell) is also on hand (with her thieving hands). But before they can continue, Hunt determines they must retrieve stone-cold assassin Paris (Pom Klementieff) from the Austrian prison she's now languishing in, to help get them to Gabriel (Esai Morales), the villain hoping to control the Entity for his own nefarious gain.

In a story both sombre and sometimes ponderous, there are a lot of throwbacks to earlier films, including the bio-weapon known as the Rabbit's Foot, from Mission: Impossible III, that may not be quite the MacGuffin we all thought. In a very nice touch, a minor character from the 1996 original movie also makes a return. Trying to turn what were solo movies into an overarching story is a little tenuous but forgivable (Cruise, it seems, wants his own MCU: the Mission Cinematic Universe).

Cruise control

If there's an issue with The Final Reckoning, aside from sluggish pacing, it might be that the Entity – not being human – is shorn of any real terror. There is a weird, disconcerting moment where Hunt goes inside a coffin-shaped box to commune with this digital beast. But for the most part, he's dealing with Gabriel; and Morales' silver-haired killer isn't anywhere near as chilling as, say, Sean Harris' Solomon Lane from the fifth and sixth instalments, Rogue Nation and Fallout.

Yet, in a way, The Final Reckoning is more about Hunt battling insane odds rather than a villain. And, yes, you still buy Cruise as the ultimate hero. McQuarrie doesn't miss a trick when it comes to showing the 62-year-old actor still looking in his prime; one lovely-looking scene sees him running at full pelt, in the way only Cruise can, across Westminster Bridge and past Big Ben.

Much of the action centres around two major set pieces; the penetration of the Russian sub and an old-fashioned biplane dogfight, already glimpsed in the trailers. As insane as they are, neither quite takes your breath in the way scaling the Burj Khalifa in Ghost Protocol or clinging to an A400 Airbus in Rogue Nation did. But perhaps that's simply because Cruise has set the bar so high. Nevertheless, they're still top-notch.

McQuarrie ensures this (presumably) closing chapter is directed with suitable scale, with Austria, the Arctic, and South Africa all on the map. He also packs out scenes with some wonderful character actors (Nick Offerman, Holt McCallany and Ted Lasso's Hannah Waddingham to name but three). But in the end, it's all about Cruise. Bringing us his own rival to James Bond was always his plan, should he choose to accept it. Mission very much accomplished.

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is out on May 21 in UK cinemas and May 23 in US theatres. For more, see our guide to all the most exciting upcoming movies of 2025.