Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning review: Tom Cruise stunts salvage a clunker mission

After 30 years of death-defying stunts, thrilling missions and various hair styles, Tom Cruise has shepherded one of the most recognizable movie franchises in Hollywood history and accomplished his mission of keeping audiences entertained. The same can be said for Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning, the expected last entry in the franchise, as it ultimately grabs you and will have you anxiously waiting to see how Cruise’s Ethan Hunt saves the day, but there are some pretty significant bumps along the way.

A continuation of the storyline from Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning, The Final Reckoning continues Ethan’s mission of trying to prevent the dangerous artificial intelligence system known as The Entity from total world domination. That actually has turned into world annihilation, as its task in this movie is to gain control of all the world’s nuclear missiles and wipe out humanity and start fresh. Ethan and his team are determined to destroy The Entity, while others are attempting to gain control over it to empower themselves.

If that all sounds straightforward enough, that’s really only thanks to the endless amount of exposition the movie dumps on us to make sure we can keep up with its plot, which you're just barely able to make sense of in the moment. Of course, that description can be attributed to just about every Mission: Impossible movie, though it feels especially true here. Thankfully, what makes this series work are the spectacular stunts and action sequences, and there are enough of those to outweigh the lackluster narrative interspersed between each set piece.

Cruise and director Christopher McQuarrie (who has directed every Mission: Impossible movie since Rogue Nation) know how to create something that will maximize the potential of the big screen (including the biggest screen, as a lot of the movie was filmed in IMAX and plays well in the format). Their execution of these sequences is nearly flawless and so much fun to watch — while Cruise’s stunt of hanging off the propeller planes has been getting a lot of the attention, my favorite stunt from the movie is a tense underwater sub sequence.

The physical commitment from Cruise does a lot of the heavy lifting in the franchise, but it’s worth mentioning his seemingly effortless charisma as Ethan Hunt. While it’s hard to fully see where Cruise ends and Hunt begins, especially in these latter movies, Cruise has given Hunt an entertainingly manic quality that adds some humor to the role, but also helps him stand out from other iconic, more cool-headed movie spies like James Bond and Jason Bourne.

But I was most impressed with the performances from members of the supporting cast. Particularly Simon Pegg’s Benji, Ethan’s long-time tech guru, who gets some of his most substantial work to date in the series, and Pom Klementieff’s Paris, a new ally that doesn’t talk much (and when she does it’s in French), but has a magnetism and wildness to her that always keeps you transfixed on what she’s going to do next. Then Severance’s Tramell Tillman shows up for just a minute, but gives a stand-out performance that makes the most of his screen time.

There’s also a supporting performance that I loved that is a callback to the very beginnings of the franchise, but I don’t want to spoil it here so you all can enjoy it in the movie.

Unfortunately, The Final Reckoning is overly reliant on callbacks, which is ironic considering McQuarrie called “fan service” poison in a Hollywood Reporter article on May 19. And aside from the one I allude to above, none of them really add anything of value to the movie, they are just there to show that all these movies are in fact all connected by a few story threads (except for Mission: Impossible II apparently, which gets no real mention).

That’s just part of what bogs down The Final Reckoning. In fact the movie is slow out of the gate as it has to set up what has happened in the two months between the end of Dead Reckoning, the basics of the plot and a quick “best-of” clip from the franchise before things really get going.

The person most impacted by all that is Angela Bassett, who reprises her role as Erika Sloane from Mission: Impossible — Fallout but has the actual impossible task of trying to make the most of scenes that are primarily exposition dumps. Outside of one necessary plot point, they could have been lifted out of the movie and nothing of value would have been lost. I can’t blame Bassett, or any of the notable actors assigned to these eye-rolling scenes, they had next to nothing to work with.

Taking another step back, the intended message of the movie — from what I was able to guess a combination of the dangers of misinformation/trusting AI, a global need recognize that we’re all humans and not necessarily enemies and that no one person can be trusted with immense power — gets drowned out by the action.

Taking all this into account makes you realize that this might not actually be all that well-written of a script.

Yet the action is the point of Cruise and McQuarrie’s Mission: Impossible movies, as these are entertainment-first projects. So while the parts of Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning may be among the weakest in the franchise, the total sum of it all is still a big, ultimately satisfying blockbuster.

Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning is now playing exclusively in movie theaters worldwide.