Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning (2025) - Film Review

      **Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, 2025**

      Directed by Christopher McQuarrie.

      Featuring Tom Cruise, Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Esai Morales, Pom Klementieff, Henry Czerny, Mariela Garriga, Holt McCallany, Janet McTeer, Nick Offerman, Hannah Waddingham, Tramell Tillman, Shea Whigham, Greg Tarzan Davis, Charles Parnell, Mark Gatiss, Rolf Saxon, Lucy Tulugarjuk, Angela Bassett, Marcin Dorociński, Katy O’Brian, Bella Glanville, Pasha D. Lychnikoff, Tomás Paredes, Martin McDougall, Katie Bernstein, and Erin Battle.

      **SYNOPSIS:**

      Ethan Hunt and the IMF team persist in their pursuit of the ominous AI known as the Entity, which has penetrated intelligence networks worldwide, while they face off against various global governments and an enigmatic figure from Ethan's past. Accompanied by new allies and equipped with tools to permanently disable the Entity, Hunt races against time to avert a drastic change to the world as we know it.

      Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning not only brings viewers up to speed with the ongoing narrative but also features a montage that honors Tom Cruise’s portrayal of Ethan Hunt so affectionately that it could serve as his highlight reel if he were ever awarded an honorary Oscar for his cinematic contributions, including action, daring stunts, and his passionate support of the theater experience.

      While a level of admiration began to intrude on the franchise with Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, director Christopher McQuarrie, co-writing the screenplay with Erik Jendresen, has amplified this aspect to a more intrusive, and at times distracting, degree. The film revisits plot elements from previous entries, compulsively ties characters to earlier villains, and reintroduces less significant characters seemingly for comedic relief, ultimately aiming for an emotional impact.

      This preoccupation tends to hinder narrative momentum, which is crucial for a film approaching three hours, as well as character development and thematic depth. When the film isn’t reiterating its broad message of unity and faith, encouraging individuals to set aside national loyalties or personal vendettas to collaborate for a sustainable future, it engages in nostalgia that one might have assumed these filmmakers would avoid. There’s an abundance of exposition and plotting, often presented through dynamic editing, which complicates the specifics of the characters' objectives, despite the general context being clear. It seems the all-knowing, all-menacing AI, The Entity, has built a doomsday cult, a captivating plot point that the film fails to explore adequately.

      The creative team is aware that the primary reason many viewers attend is to experience the adrenaline rush from Tom Cruise risking his life once again for cinema. While establishing those thrilling set pieces is crucial, this element also begins to feel drawn out here, illustrated by a brawl that interrupts Ethan’s physical training. At times, the film appears overloaded with characters and convoluted plots.

      However, the stakes are heightened, and characters feel less protected by plot armor than ever before. The intrigue extends beyond Ethan's team into the White House, where Angela Bassett portrays the U.S. President under intense pressure from volatile staff, strategizing on how to manage a situation increasingly threatened by The Entity's gradual takeover of every nation’s nuclear arsenal. To clarify, there’s nothing egregious about how the film connects to its predecessors, but it doesn’t contribute significantly to the narrative.

      Most crucially, Tom Cruise puts his health at risk in numerous ways, from the potential danger of hypothermia to drowning or falling during a series of audacious plane stunts, all of which are incredibly immersive. No special effect can rival the sight of Tom Cruise visibly trembling, subjected to wind pressure as he maneuvers around a plane in midair.

      Whereas Dead Reckoning felt more intimate, as if Tom Cruise symbolized Hollywood's last refuge against AI as a villain, showcasing the emotional intensity that generative AI could never replicate in films, much of that focus has been lost here in favor of the challenging task of locating the sunken Russian vessel that harbors The Entity’s source code. The initial phase of the mission takes so long for Ethan and his team—which includes long-time collaborators Ving Rhames and Simon Pegg, along with newer additions Hayley Atwell and Pom Klementieff—that one wonders if the entire Reckoning narrative was initially envisioned as a single film that became overly expanded in this latter part.

      It's also challenging to dwell on this point when Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning presents bursts of excitement. Whether it's a showdown with Esai Morales’ Gabriel, who seeks to manipulate Ethan Hunt to seize control of The Entity, or an extended underwater sequence that may instill a sense of anxiety just