Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning review: a comedy in disguise

What Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One lacked in narrative cohesion, it made up for by leaning into the reality that larger-than-life spectacle and Tom Cruise’s enthusiasm for doing his own stunt work have always been the franchise’s main draw. Even though the film’s artificial intelligence-focused plot felt a little shaky, its action was thrilling, and it was obvious that Cruise and director Christopher McQuarrie were trying to guide IMF agent Ethan Hunt’s overarching story toward a conclusion that would satisfy longtime fans.

It was also very clear that Dead Reckoning was just the first half of something bigger and even more ambitious. And while Paramount’s original plan to release a sequel shortly after Dead Reckoning’s debut ended up being waylaid by the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike, there is something kind of poetic about Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning arriving at a time when the push to incorporate AI into almost every aspect of our lives has become far more intense.

The Final Reckoning is a shaggier and sillier film than its predecessor — one that feels like it has given up any pretense of being about intriguing spycraft in favor of big set pieces designed to make you appreciate Cruise’s willingness to risk his life for his art. A (literal) couple of those sequences are actually very solid and do an excellent job of reminding you what’s made the Mission: Impossible series enjoyable over the course of its almost 30-year run.

But there’s a self-aware playfulness throughout the film that often makes it feel like a comedy encouraging you to chuckle at its absurdity. You can tell that the movie’s moments of near cartoonishness are meant to help offset the tension that builds as Ethan Hunt embarks on what seems (for now at least) very much like his last adventure. But rather than sending its central star off in an appropriately explosive blaze of glory, the movie as a whole is an overlong exercise in reminiscing about the Mission: Impossible franchise’s past.

With the Entity, a malevolent AI fixated on destroying humanity, out in the wild and inserting itself into almost every facet of the world’s digital infrastructure, things have become much more dangerous for Ethan (Cruise) since his last big-screen outing. It’s not just that the Entity remembers how Ethan managed to get ahold of the physical keys necessary to destroy the program. The digital sentience knows that Ethan’s one of the few people alive who can truly appreciate its ability to manipulate reality by warping people’s understandings of what is true and what isn’t.

This is also abundantly apparent to former CIA director-turned-US President Erika Sloane (Angela Bassett, reprising her role from Mission: Impossible – Fallout) and her squad of advisors working feverishly to develop a plan to keep the Entity from taking control of multiple countries’ stores of nuclear weapons. But as Sloane and her team struggle to decide how best to fight the digital threat, it quickly becomes clear that they have no choice but to call Ethan up with an offer to carry out a seemingly impossible mission, should he choose to accept it.

Though you might expect Dead Reckoning to be required (re)watching ahead of seeing The Final Reckoning, the latest Mission: Impossible spends a surprising amount of time rehashing the previous movie’s details in one of its many flashback montages. All of them (and there are quite a few) feel like McQuarrie and co-writer Erik Jendresen’s way of simultaneously getting audiences caught up to speed and inviting them to take trips down memory lane. At first, the montages read as nostalgia plays that also work to create new connective tissue throughout the entire franchise. But it isn’t long before the reused footage starts to feel like it’s pulling focus from the story at hand.

This wouldn’t be a proper Mission: Impossible without Ethan’s IMF crew — tech savant Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames), field agent Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg), pickpocket Grace (Hayley Atwell), and French assassin Paris (Pom Klementieff) — using their skills to help him get the job done. And with the Entity’s human ex-assistant Gabriel (Esai Morales) on the loose seeking to harness the program for his own nefarious ends, Ethan needs all of the help he can get.

We’re repeatedly told that the Entity is the most formidable enemy Ethan has ever faced. But the movie’s fictional stakes seldom feel all that high for its heroes as they race around the globe to track down another MacGuffin with the help of even more returning characters from the franchise’s distant past and newcomers like submarine captain Bledsoe (Tramell Tillman). Shots of the Entity taking over nuclear stockpiles one by one are buttressed with scenes of the team joking around and ripping off their latex masks with melodramatic flourishes that play like moments from a comedy. And that comedic energy bleeds into some of the film’s action sequences, which catapult Ethan high up into the sky and plunge him deep beneath the ocean.

While The Final Reckoning’s fictional peril tends to feel a bit hollow, the movie does a tremendous job of emphasizing how much practical peril Cruise was willing to put himself in to bring the movie to life. That’s exactly the energy you might expect from a feature that’s also a love letter to its central star. But as Mission: Impossible stories go, the franchise has seen better days.

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning also stars Henry Czerny, Holt McCallany, Nick Offerman, Hannah Waddingham, Greg Tarzan Davis, Mark Gatiss, and Katy O’Brian. The film is in theaters now.