Tom Cruise Sings His Swan Song—Maybe?—in Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning

A good friend of mine is full-tilt obsessed with the Mission: Impossible movies. He saw the seventh installment, Fallout, nearly ten times in theaters (by my coarse estimation). He counted down the days until the eighth film, 2023’s Dead Reckoning, the way others might anticipate the awaited return of a loved one from some faraway shore. All that giddy expectation was exuberant enough to be infectious.

I felt almost guilty, then, when I saw Dead Reckoning a few weeks before he did and was a little underwhelmed. Not that the film is bad, by any means—it just doesn’t have quite the same snap and verve as superior installments like Fallout, Rogue Nation, or Ghost Protocol. Either way, my friend eventually saw the movie, loved it, and then turned his attention to Tom Cruise’s supposed last film in the series, Final Reckoning.

Watching Final Reckoning, which premiered here at the Cannes Film Festival on May 14, I was worried my reaction would once again fail my friend’s—and many others’—excitement. And for the initial stretch of Final Reckoning—directed and co-written by franchise mainstay Christopher McQuarrie—history appeared to be repeating itself. The film opens at a hurried fever pitch, stuffed with dense exposition and mighty foreboding—a far cry from the sleek fun of M:I movies past. It’s hard to lock into, opening as it does in high-volume medias res and pleads with us to care deeply about a mystical doomsday AI that can only be stopped, of course, by super spy Ethan Hunt.

A delicate panic set in, laced with disappointment, as it looked likely that one of my most-anticipated films of the summer would fall tiny. But these are such despairing times—so full of feelings worse than disappointment—that, sitting there in the murky, I decided to resist the resigned slump of disenchantment. As this raucous and opulent film churned toward its second act, I channeled my friend’s winsome enthusiasm. What if I, like he, leaned into the ornate overwroughtness of it all, rather than pushed against it?

To my cheerful surprise, the perspective shift mostly worked. Sure, Final Reckoning is heavy-handed, obsessed with its own mythos. Viewed from a certain angle, though, that’s charming instead of frustrating. And anyway, haven’t Cruise and company earned that bombast after reliably purveying these elevated stunt spectaculars for nearly 30 years now? Accepting the wild ambition of Final Reckoning, embracing its maudlin amassing of all M:I lore into one turgid act of nostalgia, is the best way to enjoy it.

If that proves, uh, impossible for you, there are nonetheless two long, elaborate sequences in the film that ought to stir even the hardest of hearts. One is a deep dive into the murky, frigid waters of the North Pacific, a harrowing search for something vital in the fight against the Entity, a computer program that—like SkyNet before it—aims to wipe out humanity with nuclear fire. Almost unbearably tense and claustrophobic, this sequence stands shoulder to shoulder with any of the most magnificent set-pieces in the series, a daring and inventive wonder of suspense.

The other sequence has been heavily touted in the promotion of the film: a chase across the South African sky in brightly colored biplanes. Those aircraft are maybe not as frosty as the helicopters or motorcycles of previous installments. But what Cruise, McQuarrie, and the stunt coordinators do with analog vehicles is breathtaking, a heady mix of slapstick and genuine death-defiance. This sequence is yet another testament to Cruise’s extreme conviction to the work of these films, unnerving and endearing at once.

One does long for just one more substantial set-piece, though. A triptych of eye-popping bravura would have tempered Final Reckoning’s many scenes of heady talk about the meaning of all this clandestine world-saving. When Final Reckoning stops to sermonize and reflect on its own legacy, which happens quite a bit, it’s difficult not to get itchy for the next thrilling thing to happen. But, again, if one simply gives into all that pomp and circumstance—greets it with love instead of delicate annoyance—it all starts to feel pretty fun too.