Time: 170 Minutes
Age Rating: M – Violence
Cast:
Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt
Hayley Atwell as Grace
Ving Rhames as Luther Stickell
Simon Pegg as Benji Dunn
Esai Morales as Gabriel
Pom Klementieff as Paris
Henry Czerny as Eugene Kittridge
Angela Bassett as Erika Sloane
Holt McCallany as Serling Bernstein
Janet McTeer as Walters
Nick Offerman as General Sidney
Hannah Waddingham as Rear Admiral Neely
Tramell Tillman as Captain Bledsoe
Shea Whigham as Jasper Briggs
Greg Tarzan Davis as Theo Degas
Charles Parnell as Richards
Mark Gatiss as Angstrom
Rolf Saxon as William Donloe
Lucy Tulugarjuk as Tapeesa
Katy O’Brian as Kodiak
Director: Christopher McQuarrie

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning was one of my most anticipated movies of 2025. I am a fan of Mission: Impossible, and The Final Reckoning appears to be the final installment and conclusion of this nearly 30 year old franchise. While it is certainly messy and flawed in some areas, I loved it.

This movie is absolutely a lot at 2 hours and 50 minutes in length, and it does feel a tad overstuffed. Early reactions criticised its first hour and having seen the movie, I can understand why. It does a lot of setup early on and is a bit messy, even if it does serve a purpose. There are a lot of flashbacks to the previous Mission Impossible movies, and while it does somewhat feel like it’s celebrating itself, considering that it is the supposed final installment, I am fine with this. Final Reckoning also links back to a few of those past movies in some ways plot-wise, even if it does have to do a couple of retcons to make that possible. I can see some people being mixed about some of these choices, but I personally liked the callbacks and felt that they actually served the story and tied the franchise together well. What might be surprising to some is the number of flashbacks to the previous movie Dead Reckoning, considering that The Final Reckoning is really part 2 of Dead Reckoning. As someone familiar with Dead Reckoning, I really didn’t need the flashbacks to remember everything that happened. My only assumption is that they were attempting to ensure all audiences were up to speed with what happened in the previous movies, in case they hadn’t seen them. While I can understand that, I think that there were a bit too many flashbacks to Dead Reckoning, especially during expositional scenes, and it bordered on feeling like it was actively handholding the audience. There’s also a lot of exposition in this film even by Mission: Impossible standards, but that’s somewhat understandable considering how much is happening in the movie.

Despite all that, The Final Reckoning had me engaged from beginning to end. The stakes have never been higher and larger in this franchise, the urgency is felt throughout and it does deliver some earned emotional moments. At the same time, it isn’t shy about embracing its more sillier moments. While I was liking it for the first 90 minutes or so, it really locks in around the halfway point. The action scenes become more frequent, the pacing improves, and from that point to the end, it’s pretty much near perfection.

Tom Cruise reprises his iconic role of Ethan Hunt for the eighth and probably final time, and he doesn’t miss a beat, delivering probably the most emotional performance of the character and gives it a lot of appropriate weight. The rest of the cast are great too, from returning faces to new ones, including Hayley Atwell, Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, Pom Klementieff, Esai Morales, Angela Bassett, Henry Czerny, Greg Tarzan Davis, Shea Whigham, Nick Offerman, Hannah Waddingham, Tramell Tillman and Rolf Saxon.

This is Christopher McQuarrie’s fourth Mission: Impossible movie and unsurprisingly his work here is fantastic, all his strengths are on display here. The practical action is thrilling, with amazing camerawork, impressive choreography, and absolutely incredible and insane stunts. Surprisingly, there isn’t a massive number of action sequences as you would think considering it’s a Mission: Impossible movie. They’re mainly in the second half, but they all absolutely deliver. There’s particularly two sequences which are amongst the franchise’s very best set pieces. The score from Max Aruj and Alfie Godfrey works really well, and the music is very much in line with Lorne Balfe’s work from the previous two movies.

While it’s certainly messy in parts, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is thrilling, bold, and exhilarating with outstanding action set pieces, and was a satisfying finale to the series.