• Release year: 2025
• Director: Christopher McQuarrie.
• Producers: Tom Cruise and Christopher McQuarrie.
• Screenplay by: Erik Jendresen and Christopher McQuarrie.
• Cinematography by: Fraser Taggart.
• Music by: Max Aruj and Alfie Godfrey.

Shotgun Commentary: Tom Cruise doing Tom Cruise things.

Review

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is the eighth and final instalment of the Mission Impossible saga. What began in 1996 as a great spy movie full of fancy-looking tech and explosions, has grown to be an iconic spy franchise full of…fancy-looking tech and explosions. But hey, why fix it if it’s not broken, amirite?

The basics

The film continues what Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1 (2023) began. Yeah, no. There’s no Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 2. Indeed, it makes no sense. But moving on from the genius who decided the titles, the film is exactly what you expect from a Mission Impossible movie. Much like it has been all along, the action scenes and Tom Cruise’s stunts are the main attraction. Is Tom Cruise playing spy Ethan Hunt, or is Ethan Hunt playing Tom Cruise playing Ethan Hunt? We will never know, but what fun it is to follow his death-defying antics regardless!

In fact, for all of you superfans who actually go to the cinema to see it, there is a special Tom Cruise message at the beginning of the feature. It won’t change your life and you might wonder how such a great actor is incapable of recording a one-minute message without a prompter, or at least without being obvious about reading from it, but it is a nice touch nonetheless.

Don’t stay after the credits, though. The ending might seem cliché and borderline anticlimactic for an eight-film saga, and you might feel the temptation to stay after the credits just in case there is one final bang. There isn’t, and after almost three hours of suffering, your bladder will definitely appreciate you not staying for those extra five minutes of credits. You have this critic’s word: there is no post-credits scene. Go to the bathroom.

Gathering the loose ends

The story closes the narrative started by Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1, but that’s not all. It adds just enough references and callbacks to make it look like the whole story has been leading up to this final act. Were they all thought out from the beginning, or just convenient details and plot holes that can be inserted in any other narrative of the franchise? Probably, the second, but it never hurts to dream.

You’ll finally learn what the hell was the “rabbit’s foot”, what happened to the loser who worked at the office where Ethan flying-squirrels his way into some intel, and tons of other references that you may or may not get. Some characters live, some die, some perform incredible physical feats despite lacking training or form to do so… It’s all good fun.

Women: mission impossible

Character-wise, not much changes. For anyone who’s had the terrible fortune of watching G20 (2025), this will be the second film you enjoy with a black female president. Hardly a substitute for the real-life thing, but definitely a nice fictional respite in which the world can count on a strong and rational US leader to deal with any crisis.

The absence of Rebecca Ferguson’s Ilsa Faust is more apparent than ever after her love-interest position is substituted by Grace (Hayley Atwell), no surname. We met Grace in the previous film, where she began to take over as love interest. This final turn in the complicated love life of Ethan is rather disappointing as he seems to revert to the “mostly useless cheerleader” love interest who does just enough to appear justified but remains dimmed enough to not get a single ounce of his spotlight.

You guessed it, we are essentially back in 2006 with Julia (Michelle Monaghan). Ilsa showed us a peek of what a competent love interest could be, a high bar that Grace hasn’t been able to reach despite Atwell’s acting abilities.

Final thoughts

All in all, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning delivers exactly what you are looking for in a film of the saga. You have your face-reveal scenes, your plane fights, and even what looks like a Last Breath (2025) tribute. The high-octane sequences of Ethan doing cool stuff in different means of transport are only slightly spoiled by the clichéd, syrupy love scenes of a relationship that didn’t actually need to happen.

Luckily for you, you can always count on Simon Pegg to keep things light and sarcastic to help digest most conversations, almost effectively distracting you from the fact that there is not a single conversation in the whole film that hasn’t taken place one way or another in previous instalments of the saga. Overall, you will love this feature if you are looking for a great action movie with little to no script value.

Thanks to Paramount for big-screen access! Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning will be released the 21st of May.

Advice to take from this movie:

• Simon Pegg will always improve a film.
• If you need to do something delicate, do it BEFORE you jump from a plane. It will save you a lot of grief
• In life, be an Ilsa, not a Grace.

What’s your take? Have you watched Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning? Don’t hesitate to let me know your thoughts in the comments section below, or leave a message in my contact page! For more reviews and cinema-related articles, check out the rest of my blog! 😀