Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning is the reshaped sequel to 2023’s Dead Reckoning Part One (they dropped “Part Two” after the suboptimal reception to that film). I liked the last one quite a bit, and while this finale has some really great moments, it can’t quite reach the same heights (despite Tom Cruise literally hanging from a plane in the end!).
This movie picks up where the last one ended. Ethan Hunt and his team are all that stands between an artificial intelligence known as The Entity taking over complete control of the world. It has already started infiltrating the weapons systems of the nuclear world powers, with just a handful of countries, including the USA, still in control of their nuclear weapons. Once The Entity controls them all, it wants to launch a nuclear war to decimate humanity, securing itself in a self-powered bunker, where it can wait out until survivors come out and that it can then control. There are even nutbags out there (and aren’t there always?) who have started to worship The Entity in a cult-like way, and are willing to take directions from it to further its mission. From the last film, Hunt is in possession of the one Key that can unlock The Entity’s source code, from which Hunt can then upload a virus to stop it. However, that source code is sitting in a scuttled submarine at the bottom of the ocean. In typical Mission Impossible way, Hunt will traverse the globe to gather the items he needs to pull off this last ditch effort to save humanity.
The movie starts out slow, and I mean REALLY slow. There’s lots of dialogue to catch up the viewer on what is going on, lots of jumping around, and tons of flashbacks to previous Mission Impossible films (it really is driving home that they’ve all been connected) before the action really gets going. A full hour or so of setting the stage for what is to come, but when the movie is pushing 3 hours long, you have an hour to do that. It throws so much information at you, though, that I was starting to get lost, and I’ve seen all the movies! I can’t imagine how someone newer to the franchise would feel. Once you get through all that setup, the movie picks up quickly, and the rest is pretty great. The final action sequence, when Hunt is chasing the one man who can stop him, while his team is waiting for him to upload that virus at just the right moment, is nail-bitingly intense and as good as any moment in the film series yet.
When the double film was first announced as Dead Reckoning Parts 1 and 2, it was heavily implied that this was Ethan Hunt’s last mission, and the reworked title of The Final Reckoning certainly doubles down on that, but the film does leave at least the possibility of a reset. I don’t think I’m spoiling anything when I say there’s a very “Ocean’s 11” moment at the end where Hunt and his (new) team are giving goggly eyes at each other before walking away. Tom Cruise himself has said that he’d love to keep doing more. I just hope that if they return to the well, they can trim the fat, and get back to some deep spy stuff and not just another action film, because those MI films that blended espionage and action where the best. ★★★½
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