My BRUTALLY HONEST REVIEW of MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: THE FINAL RECKONING!

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Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning is finally here, delayed for a year due to apparent reshoots, but we knew this one was finally coming, because Tom Cruise has been doing the rounds again, pretending he loves mixing with the public.

So far, all the ‘big name’ critics have had their say, but because all they care about is getting their publications’ brand names on the poster, they all gave it 5/5, blah-blahing on about it being “The Best Mission Yet”, etc.

So, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, What Culture, The Guardian… you can all fuck off!

The Sun, the Daily Mail, Daily Express, Daily Mirror, Metro… you can all fuck off, any day of the week, regardless!

But, now, it’s time for some actual honesty!

So, does Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning have a coherent plot, or is it just a number of set-pieces, placed one after another, with the good guys always being good, and people like Grace and Ilsa being nice one minute, then complete planks to Ethan, the next?

And, I don’t know if this was IMAX-exclusive, but we had an intro from Tom Cruise, pleased that we’re seeing this in the cinema, which ilicited a “Thankyou, Tom!”, from one member of the audience. Not sure if they were being sarcastic, but they got a few laughs.

Last time, he was running around, trying to find both halves of a Cruciform key, in order to… well, he didn’t know. Even Gabriel (Esai Morales) claimed he knew, and that’s the reason why Ethan shouldn’t bump him off, but he could’ve saved himself a great deal of hassle, because in the end, Paris (the stunning Pom Klementieff) spilled the beans.

Following a montage of clips from all 7 films so far, it was amusing to see that this film’s “message that’ll self-destruct in five seconds” comes on a VHS tape, but after that, we’re back to the Entity AI thing from the last film, and is being appropriated by a Doomsday Cult, who are are demented as all the Deform voters.

Two months have passed since Dead Reckoning, Gabriel is on the run, Paris is in custody – but won’t spill the beans, and Ethan wants to kill the Entity, but if he does, it’ll mean the end of cyberspace, and all the incels won’t be able to cry into their pronouns on Twitter.

Ultimately, Ethan wants to retrive the Podkova from sunken Sevastapol submarine, put it together with Luther’s (Ving Rhames) ‘poison pill’ device, which will reveal the Entity’s source code and allow him to control it.

His beef against the Entity, is that the thing, itself, wants to play WarGames and launch our nuclear arsenal against us, but that would end itself. Or maybe it thinks it’ll survive, like in the Terminator films? Who knows! They don’t expand upon that.

It could’ve taken them five minutes to say that, but because it’s been two years since the last film, and given how this one is tying it – and the whole series – in so many twisty knots, it just gets bogged down in its own lore, reminding me of later seasons of ‘24‘.

As such, I lost count of the number of times a group of characters got together to recite the plot over and over, almost every 10 minutes, during the mammoth 170-minute running time.

It’s also like watching Doctor Who try to rewrite itself many times over, until no-one knows what is canon, and in the end, that one’s just been cancelled, Ncuti Gatwa fired, and the woke crowd can all go back to sleep.

And because they spend so long talking, there’s only time for two big action scenes: the submarine and the bi-planes. They’ve done far better in the past, with far more action and much smaller running times. To this day, nothing beats the original movie.

All you need to know is that, as usual, a fight will always break out, the the good guys will always be saved at the last moment, and then they can go to the Winchester, have a nice cold pint, and wait for all of this to blow over. After all, why bother making so many films, if they’re going to do noting but retread over old ground?

Plus, the casting can be hilarious. When Ethan’s about to set off for the submarine, he’s with a DEI underwater crew: Chinese man, Ginger bloke, and manly lesbian. Or maybe the latter was non-binary. That’s in trend, these days.

And why is Tom Cruise doing his endless running, again? Sure, when he was trying to escape the Kremlin being blown up in Ghost Protocol, it makes sense to run at top speed, but there’s scenes in this where he’s running back and forth across a London bridge, rather than go in a car, and given that there’s no-one else around to witness this, it just shrieks, “We hired the bridge out for the night, so Tom and do his running thing, again”. It’s basically become a meme, at this point.

I’ll be very interested to see how this does at the box office. While it had IMAX previews on the Monday and Tuesday, with one showing each, I saw it on the Wednesday, to coincide with watching Lilo And Stitch 3D, and the return of X-Men in the cinema, and the IMAX was rammed… although, I know where the broken seats are in mine, so booked a seat next to one, and effectively, got a double seat!

Captain America: Brave New World didn’t break even, Thunderbolts* won’t, and this film changed its name from Dead Reckoning Part 2, because the last one took $571m at the worldwide box office, and actually LOST $100m for Paramount Pictures!

At this point, the only film making a profit, this summer, will be Peppa Pig Meets The Baby!

But what next for the franchise? Cruise has hinted that they will make more films, but that’ll be dependent on the success of this. I think it’d be nice to see him go back to doing something more hardcore that we rarely see from him, as shown in Collateral and Magnolia.

On the plus side, if you’re going to see it in IMAX, there’s approximately 45 minutes of the film opened up to 1.90:1. This is mainly for the two action scenes, but also a few other brief scenes, as well as the opening with the introduction about the Entity.

Additionally, for the aspect ratio nerds like me, just after halfway through, as Tom Cruise turns a dial twice, as he’s about to head down to the submarine, each of the turns neatly causes the screen to open up from 2.39:1 to 1.90:1.

Beyond that, I’ve listed a number of plot holes and problems with the film below, and which I’ll put behind a spoiler header, as it contains… y’know, spoilers.

12 Plot holes and problems in Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning (and probably more to come!):

Spoiler Inside	Select Show
1. Set 30 years after May 22nd 1996 – the release date for the first film, it’s interesting to see CIA Analyst William Donloe (Rolf Saxon) return, after Ethan Hunt broke into his office from above, accidentally left a knife on his computer desk, and caused Donloe to be sent to Alaska! However, it’s remarkably improbable that events would bring them together, so that’s one to be filed under “fan service”. At least they gave him a happy continuation of his life, and he had stuff to do in this film – and, often, more than others! 2. Another example of bringing back references from previous films is the Rabbit’s Foot from Mission Impossible 3, and how it’s NOT a biohazard item, as it was made to appear to be, but actually the core module from the sunken Russian submarine, which will give Ethan control over the Entity’s source code. 3. It was rather pointless that US Intelligence agent Jasper Briggs (Shea Whigham) is actually Jim Phelps Jr, the son of Jim Phelps, played in the first film by Jon Voight, since unless there is a ninth installment, absolutely nothing is done with this information. 4. After Ilsa showed how capable she was in Rogue Nation and Fallout, how would she let herself get stuck in a situation where she can be quickly offed with the help of Gabriel’s knife? As such, I expected her to make a comeback, because that’s how daft films work, but nope, not a bar of it. 5. Talking of absent characters, what happened to The White Widow? She always seemed a bit of a spare part, anyway, as well as being brought five films after her character’s mother, Max (Vanessa Redgrave). However, she’d pop up for no reason, regardless, and I was expecting her to do the same with this. Was Vanessa Kirby filming Fantastic Four at the same time? Or did Cruise feel like there were too many female characters, thus relying on Hayley Atwell‘s Hackjaw McGraw to do the heavy lifting? 6. As such, with Paris now on Ethan and the team’s side, despite her high-kicking skills, Pom Klementieff didn’t really do an awful lot in this film. She did more standing about than action. 7. Who was Marie? (Mariela Garriga) We briefly saw her in a “30 years ago” clip, in the last film, where Gabriel killed her in cold blood. I expected her to show her face, but nope…. nothing at all. 8. And for all the shit Gabriel caused Ethan, obviously, he had to die, but how did he bow out? Sliding along the tail of the yellow plane, and suffering a head injury?! Fuck off! In the end, Ethan found out that the cruciform key was to be used on the Sevastapol, anyway, so may as well have just killed him last time. 9. This sequel has talk of a hyperbaric decompression chamber, since Ethan is going down into the submarine, but might suffer the bends on the way up, and so, needs this chamber. However, like the culmination of the train scene from last time, we’re waiting to see how he’ll survive at the critical moment… only for the film to completely rob us of that, and skip to the end, where everyone is completely fine. 10. What was wrong with Luther? He was ill, but no reason was given. 11. How did Degas (Greg Tarzan Davis) get involved in all of Ethan’s derring-do? He was Briggs’ cop partner, but whenever the switch happened, he just ended up hanging around with Ethan and his friends. 12. Why was there just 3 days left to kill the entity? How did they know precisely when it was going to end?

Spoiler Inside

Select Show

1. Set 30 years after May 22nd 1996 – the release date for the first film, it’s interesting to see CIA Analyst William Donloe (Rolf Saxon) return, after Ethan Hunt broke into his office from above, accidentally left a knife on his computer desk, and caused Donloe to be sent to Alaska! However, it’s remarkably improbable that events would bring them together, so that’s one to be filed under “fan service”.

At least they gave him a happy continuation of his life, and he had stuff to do in this film – and, often, more than others!

2. Another example of bringing back references from previous films is the Rabbit’s Foot from Mission Impossible 3, and how it’s NOT a biohazard item, as it was made to appear to be, but actually the core module from the sunken Russian submarine, which will give Ethan control over the Entity’s source code.

3. It was rather pointless that US Intelligence agent Jasper Briggs (Shea Whigham) is actually Jim Phelps Jr, the son of Jim Phelps, played in the first film by Jon Voight, since unless there is a ninth installment, absolutely nothing is done with this information.

4. After Ilsa showed how capable she was in Rogue Nation and Fallout, how would she let herself get stuck in a situation where she can be quickly offed with the help of Gabriel’s knife?

As such, I expected her to make a comeback, because that’s how daft films work, but nope, not a bar of it.

5. Talking of absent characters, what happened to The White Widow? She always seemed a bit of a spare part, anyway, as well as being brought five films after her character’s mother, Max (Vanessa Redgrave). However, she’d pop up for no reason, regardless, and I was expecting her to do the same with this.

Was Vanessa Kirby filming Fantastic Four at the same time? Or did Cruise feel like there were too many female characters, thus relying on Hayley Atwell‘s Hackjaw McGraw to do the heavy lifting?

6. As such, with Paris now on Ethan and the team’s side, despite her high-kicking skills, Pom Klementieff didn’t really do an awful lot in this film. She did more standing about than action.

7. Who was Marie? (Mariela Garriga) We briefly saw her in a “30 years ago” clip, in the last film, where Gabriel killed her in cold blood. I expected her to show her face, but nope…. nothing at all.

8. And for all the shit Gabriel caused Ethan, obviously, he had to die, but how did he bow out? Sliding along the tail of the yellow plane, and suffering a head injury?! Fuck off!

In the end, Ethan found out that the cruciform key was to be used on the Sevastapol, anyway, so may as well have just killed him last time.

9. This sequel has talk of a hyperbaric decompression chamber, since Ethan is going down into the submarine, but might suffer the bends on the way up, and so, needs this chamber. However, like the culmination of the train scene from last time, we’re waiting to see how he’ll survive at the critical moment… only for the film to completely rob us of that, and skip to the end, where everyone is completely fine.

10. What was wrong with Luther? He was ill, but no reason was given.

11. How did Degas (Greg Tarzan Davis) get involved in all of Ethan’s derring-do? He was Briggs’ cop partner, but whenever the switch happened, he just ended up hanging around with Ethan and his friends.

12. Why was there just 3 days left to kill the entity? How did they know precisely when it was going to end?

Mission Impossible: Final Reckoning is in cinemas now, and is available to pre-order on 4K Blu-ray, 4K Blu-ray Dead Reckoning/Final Reckoning Boxset, Blu-ray and DVD.

Mission Impossible: Final Reckoning – Official Trailer – Paramount Pictures

Detailed specs:

Cert:
Running time: 170 minutes
Release date: May 19th 2025
Studio: 1.90:1 (IMAX, some scenes), 2.39:1 ARRIRAW (4.5K), Dolby Vision, IMAX, Anamorphic Panavision, X-OCN XT(4K), ZRAW(4K, 6K)
Cinema: Odeon Trafford Centre
Rating: 4/10

Director: Christopher McQuarrie
Producers: Tom Cruise, Christopher McQuarrie
Screenplay: Erik Jendresen, Christopher McQuarrie
Music: Max Aruj, Alfie Godfrey

Cast:
Ethan Hunt: Tom Cruise
Grace: Hayley Atwell
Luther Stickell: Ving Rhames
Benji Dunn: Simon Pegg
Gabriel: Esai Morales
Paris: Pom Klementieff
Kittridge: Henry Czerny
Serling: Holt McCallany
Walters: Janet McTeer
General Sidney: Nick Offerman
Admiral Neely: Hannah Waddingham
Captain Bledsoe: Tramell Tillman
Erika Sloane: Angela Bassett
Briggs: Shea Whigham
Degas: Greg Tarzan Davis
Marie: Mariela Garriga
Richards: Charles Parnell
Angstrom: Mark Gatiss
William Donloe: Rolf Saxon
Tapeesa: Lucy Tulugarjuk
Denlinger: Cary Elwes
Kodiak: Katy O’Brian
Pills: Stephen Oyoung
Shirley: Paul Bullion

Dom Robinson

Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.

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