Review - Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning

[The following review contains SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!]

Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning opens with a lengthy montage of clips from the franchise’s previous installments. Several critics have dismissed this “sizzle reel” as shallow “fan service/nostalgia bait,” but I disagree with that assessment; its inclusion is extremely purposeful: to begin the saga’s alleged “swan song” (we shall see, won’t we?), producer/star Tom Cruise and writer/director Christopher McQuarrie briefly glance backwards, reflecting on and reevaluating the core themes that have defined the series so far.

And what do they choose to emphasize? Ethan Hunt’s tragic backstory and his enigmatic history with the nefarious Gabriel (an ambiguous dynamic belatedly introduced in 2023’s vestigially titled Dead Reckoning Part One)? No; although that thread isn’t quite discarded altogether, it winds up becoming rather incidental to the overarching conflict, almost to the point of being virtually inconsequential. (Indeed, Gabriel is essentially demoted from main antagonist to minor obstacle, and is actually more compelling for it; Esai Morales relishes the opportunity to portray a Saturday morning cartoon villain—cackling maniacally, posing melodramatically, and ineffectually taunting his rival from the safety of his primary-colored escape biplane.)

The flashback instead highlights our hero’s recurring encounters with loss. Ever since his entire team was slaughtered in the first film while he watched helplessly from the sidelines (we are, in fact, treated to two separate reprises of Emilio Estevez's infamously grisly demise), Ethan has been haunted by death, tormented by each subsequent failure to protect those that he (as Luther and Kittridge phrase it) “holds close.” The significance of this repressed trauma is reinforced at the tail end of the prologue, when Hunt brutally butchers (largely offscreen) the henchman that threatened to torture and murder the latest addition to his crew; dazed, panting, and drenched with sweat and blood, he desperately stammers feeble justifications for the uncharacteristic act of violence: “You know I wouldn’t have done that if it wasn’t necessary, right? I had to; he would have killed you!”

This emotional foundation contributes some much-needed personal stakes to the otherwise skeletal plot—a common feature of the franchise’s most recent chapters. Notice that I said “feature” and not “flaw,” because the relative simplicity of the story is a deliberate creative decision—a juxtaposition of sorts: the minimalist substance allows the maximalist style to shine all the brighter. Cruise and McQ have made it no secret that, when crafting these movies, they always start with the spectacular set pieces and reverse engineer any requisite narrative context from there, gradually filling in the gaps as they go along—and despite the seams showing more obviously in this case than in their prior efforts, that process still serves them well: the best moments here (a literally breathtaking sequence in which Hunt navigates the narrow, rotating corridors of a submerged submarine precariously perched on the precipice of a vast undersea chasm; a finale that pays homage to silent cinema in general and the works of Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, and Harry Houdini in particular) are every bit as suspenseful as Top Gun: Maverick’s climactic bombing run—a scene so action-packed, nerve-racking, and anxiety-inducing that it made me feel as though I was experiencing a heart attack in the theater.

Unlike many Twitter users, I refuse to rank the entries in the Mission: Impossible series; they vary in quality, of course, boasting their own individual strengths and weaknesses, but they’re consistently more visually accomplished than the average Hollywood blockbuster. If I were inclined to do so, however, I’d place The Final Reckoning somewhere near the lower middle of the list. It takes some huge swings, and while it strikes out as often as it hits a grand slam, it nevertheless deserves credit for sheer ambition.