MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - THE FINAL RECKONING (2025)

Genre: Action/Thriller
Director: Christopher McQuarrie
Cast: Tom Cruise, Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Esai Morales, Pom Klementieff, Henry Czerny, Holt McCallany, Janet McTeer, Nick Offerman, Hannah Waddingham, Tramell Tillman and Angela Bassett, Shea Whigham, Greg Tarzan Davis, Charles Parnell, Mark Gatiss, Rolf Saxon, Lucy Tulugarjuk
Runtime: 2 hrs 49 mins
Rating: PG13 (Violence)
Released By: UIP
Official Website: 

Opening Day: 17 May 2025

Synopsis: Our lives are the sum of our choices. Tom Cruise is Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning. 

Movie Review:

Tom Cruise has indeed done the impossible. For close to three decades, Cruise has been the face, the pulse and the very life of the ‘Mission: Impossible’ franchise, and we dare say that no other actor on this planet could have accomplished what he had. As the title implies, this is Cruise’s swan song; because at the age of 62, there is really little more that he hasn’t done or needs to prove.

That finality permeates every minute of Christopher McQuarrie’s gargantuan finale, which, picking up from ‘Dead Reckoning’, sees Cruise confront an artificial intelligence known as The Entity bent on destroying Earth. Months have passed since Cruise’s IMF superspy Ethan Hunt outsmarted the Entity’s proxy, an old nemesis of Hunt called Gabriel (Esai Morales), by stealing a key that apparently unlocks the Entity’s source code and therefore the formula to destroying it; and in these months, governments have collapsed, societal order has crumbled, and the Entity has gained control of the world’s nuclear arsenals.

After ‘Rogue Nation’ and ‘Fallout’, McQuarrie has decided to up the ante, essentially mounting a Cold War-like film with superpowers being forced into military brinksmanship. As understandable as those ambitions may be, ‘Final Reckoning’ also lays bare the challenges of that conceit – put plainly, McQuarrie struggles to realise the full extent of the global threat that the Entity purportedly has engineered, not least the fact that it all comes down to Hunt and his ragtag team to stop it; and so, despite being well-oiled, there is no denying that the entire first hour creaks under the weight of its setup and exposition.

Thankfully, we are in good company with Hunt, his old IMF comrades Luther (Ving Rhames) and Benji (Simon Pegg), master pickpocket cum latest love interest Grace (Hayley Atwell) and former-henchperson-turned-ally Paris (Pom Klementiff); there are also memorable run-ins with federal agents Briggs (Shea Whigham) and Degas (Greg Tarzan Davis), as well as IMF chief Eugene Kittridge (Henry Czerny). Thanks to the ensemble, the conversational turn-taking that doubles up to move the plotting along is surprisingly engaging. You’ll appreciate too the callbacks that McQuarrie has weaved into the film – and without spoiling the surprise for fans, let’s just say that there is a nice narrative link to ‘Mission: Impossible III’, as well as a welcome return by hapless analyst William Donloe (Rolf Saxon) from the very first movie.

Even at just under three hours – the longest of any chapter in the series – it does take more than an hour before the action kicks into high gear. Unlike the other films, there are just two major set-pieces here: one that sees Cruise make a daring, potentially deadly ocean dive to retrieve the source code from the sunken Russian submarine Sevastopol in the Arctic Ocean; and another that sees Cruise literally take to the skies to take down Gabriel, as he stows away on a biplane, commandeers it, then jump onto a second biplane and hang on to the wing while swooping up to 8000 feet.

When it does get there, the wait is absolutely worth it. Spinning an intricate plan with two parallel theatres of action, McQuarrie juggles both explanation and action deftly, with Hunt’s team racing against time to broadcast the exact coordinates of the Sevastopol in order that Hunt may jump off a USS Ohio submarine to dive more than 500 metres to get to the Russian submarine; and when inside, Hunt has to navigate a room full of floating torpedoes as the submarine rolls around on the unstable sea floor. If you haven’t already read, in order to ensure that you know it is Cruise doing the stunt, he wears a lit mask all the way through, which also means he can only put that on for ten minutes at a time or risk hypoxia.

And if there was any doubt that Cruise’s dedication to spectacle and showmanship is absolute and unquestionable, his piece de resistance manoeuvring around two biplanes in mid-air will put all of that to rest. It is a wondrous feat of derring-do, which McQuarrie intertwines with a couple of other standoffs involving a nuclear bomb and another act of precise timing, and is adrenaline-pumping, nail-biting and downright sensational. It is a perfect symbol of what this franchise has been about – that is, a thrilling cocktail of spy thrillers, summer blockbuster fun, and Cruise risking life and limb in the name of practical action.

We won’t pretend though that ‘Final Reckoning’ is the best of the series; and in particular, even if it is difficult to spin yet another terrorist or rogue agent to top the combination of Solomon Lane and August Walker, the creation of an all-powerful, nameless, faceless and omnipresent digital entity in both ‘Reckonings’ cannot quite top the groundedness we enjoyed in ‘Rogue Nation’ and ‘Fallout’. Still, there is no question that both Cruise and McQuarrie have endeavoured to take this concluding chapter of Cruise’s IMF exploits to dizzying heights and depths, and it would be (almost) impossible to top what they have achieved here.

For the millions of fans – who like us – have grown up watching Cruise embody Hunt over the last three decades, ‘Final Reckoning’ is also sweet, sentimental and satisfying. What truly moved us was Luther’s coda at the end, summarising not just what it had meant for Hunt through a sum of all his choices over the years, but also what these choices represent to ‘save those we hold close, and those we never meet’, and above all, a reflection of the state of the real world today as well as a hope for more kindness, trust and mutual understanding. It is as magnificent a way to go out as any, and if this is truly Cruise’s final reckoning with the ‘Mission: Impossible’ series, it is also a beautiful sendoff that we will treasure long after the credits are over.

Movie Rating:

(Capping a three-decade journey of stunts, jumps and runs, 'Final Reckoning' sees Cruise take us to dizzying heights and depths for an exhilarating, sentimental and satisfying sendoff to the greatest action franchise in modern cinema)

Review by Gabriel Chong