Twenty-nine years after Brian De Palma rebooted a classic TV series with an exploding fish tank and a dangling heist that became legend, Mission: Impossible has reached its final chapter — or so it claims. The Final Reckoning, a direct continuation of Dead Reckoning Part One, is an appropriately explosive send-off for the IMF saga. It’s big, breathless, ludicrously committed to its own mythos, and serves as a fitting swan song for Tom Cruise’s indefatigable super-spy Ethan Hunt.
This time, the stakes are existential. Hunt and his ever-loyal crew — including Hayley Atwell's slippery thief-turned-agent Grace, Simon Pegg's eternally stressed techie Benji Dunn, and Ving Rhames’ solemn Luther Stickell — are chasing down Gabriel (Esai Morales), a ghost from Ethan's past and a former liaison of the all-seeing AI known as the Entity. With the Sevastopol’s core module (a surprise retcon of Mission: Impossible III's mysterious Rabbit’s Foot) at the centre of a global tech war, the hunt is no longer just personal. It’s digital Armageddon.
Director Christopher McQuarrie pulls out all the stops. A submerged submarine heist, a biplane mid-air fight, and the return of beloved characters all blend with slick pacing and McQuarrie’s now-trademark sleek, noir-infused aesthetic. It doesn’t reach the operatic highs of Fallout or the breathless elegance of Ghost Protocol, but The Final Reckoning finds its power in urgency and closure.
Luther’s sacrifice in London, defusing a nuclear device with no time to spare, is a moment that highlights the character's importance beyond the quips and keyboards. Rhames plays it with solemn finality. Meanwhile, Grace gets a true hero’s arc, shifting from reluctant player to vital agent of resolution. Atwell has real chemistry with Cruise, giving us a bond that feels more textured than romantic, more human than mythic.
Benji, as always, remains the heart of the team. His near-death surgery scene, performed by Paris (Pom Klementieff), becomes a surprisingly tender moment, re-emphasising the core value of the franchise: loyalty over logic. Klementieff, given more room to breathe than in the last film, delivers both brute force and grace.
And then there’s the climax. A South African digital bunker. A parachuting dogfight. A villain who finally dies not from a bullet, but by the cruel timing of physics. Gabriel’s demise is brutal and inevitable. It’s not that Hunt bests him with brute strength, but rather that fate, and the people Hunt inspired, finally turn the tide.
Kittridge (Henry Czerny) and Erika Sloane (Angela Bassett) offer strong political counterweights. Kittridge is all smoky backroom realpolitik, while Sloane now occupies the Oval Office, balancing her allegiance to Hunt against the crumbling legitimacy of traditional governance. Their ideological clash brings a weight the franchise hasn’t quite touched since the first film.
But the biggest swing may be the reappearance of the original film’s ghost: William Donloe, the disgraced CIA analyst from Mission: Impossible (1996). In a franchise often accused of wiping the slate clean between entries, this callback is thrillingly smart. His redemption arc — memorising sonar patterns to help Hunt — is both absurd and poignant.
The final handoff — a destroyed Sevastopol module, a dormant Entity trapped on a physical drive, and a CIA that once again finds itself playing catch-up — ends the film not with a bang, but a reminder: Hunt's victories are never clean. They're built on loss, sacrifice, and a belief in something more powerful than control.
Is this truly the end? With Grace holding the Entity, Kittridge fuming in the shadows, and Ethan walking off into a foggy London alley like a myth reborn, it certainly feels like a goodbye. But as anyone who has followed this series knows: nothing is ever truly impossible.
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is pure blockbuster bravado. It roars. It races. It delivers the stunts, the tech, the tension — and even manages to tie its past into something that feels, improbably, earned. Tom Cruise may eventually hang up the harness, but Ethan Hunt’s legacy is already sealed.
This mission, should you choose to accept it, is one hell of a ride.
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