'Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning' Review: A Bonkers, Bombastic & Bittersweet Ode to Cruise Control

Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning

In theaters

Rating - ***1/2 (3.5/5)

Cast: Tom Cruise, Simon Pegg, Hayley Atwell, Esai Morales, Ving Rhames, Pom Klementieff & more

Directed by: Christopher McQuarrie

How can you possibly believe that a 63-year-old man is able to do what Tom Cruise does in the seemingly endless Mission: Impossible movies and just somehow keeps going notches higher with every film, perhaps most of all in Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning? The word “final” is key here as we are led to believe this is final, maybe, perhaps, possibly.

But that’s what suspension of disbelief does, isn’t it? The franchise rests on this more than anything and it asks you to suspend your disbelief more than ever this time. That leap of faith is not just encouraged, it is demanded, and we, like faithful devotees of the church of Cruise, comply without blinking.

The convoluted plot, the many tech jargons, an AI enemy called “The Entity,” and a gazillion things try to make sense of what’s mainly going on. They barely make sense, but you absolutely do not care about it. The core idea is the same that’s always been — the world will be finished if Ethan Hunt, played by Cruise with relentless commitment and absurd stamina, does not go absolutely ballistic with a series of impossible feats to save the world. The film thrives in that exact madness — logic-defying but breath-snatching, implausible yet intoxicatingly visceral.

A Love Letter to Mission: Impossible

But what director Christopher McQuarrie, who also breathed life back into this franchise — with the notable exception of the absolutely fabulous Brad Bird-directed Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol — is aiming for isn’t just the externals. He is also trying to add the ode to this franchise you wanted it to have.

There are montages aplenty, callbacks, footage from the earlier Mission: Impossible films and returning characters that lend the weightage it somehow needed amid all the absolute madness ensuing otherwise. This is McQuarrie’s tribute to a cinematic anomaly, a celebration of one man’s unrelenting pursuit of something far beyond cinematic excellence — sheer movie magic.

Plot Holes? Tom Cruise Fills Them

Cruise’s Hunt has to push his limits more than ever and that is the thing about this formidable man. How is he doing these unfathomable things so effortlessly? Sprinting like a cheetah, having washboard abs in the most sculpted and natural way possible, with envious silky hair and pulling off a breathtaking underwater sequence.

To mount an underwater sequence for about eight to ten minutes of a two hour fifty minute film where there is no background score, no dialogue, nothing — just exhilarating choreography and cinematography that seems all kinds of fabulous — and that’s just an understatement. It is bold, it is surreal, it is meditative in the way only a Cruise-powered spectacle can be.

And that’s the difference when you have Cruise in this franchise doing what he does. Seldom is an actor able to make you not care too much about the plot holes, the loopholes and the obvious shortcomings but Cruise knows he can and he absolutely does. He weaponises our awe against the script’s occasional fumbling, and it works. He leaps, he runs, he falls, he swims, he breathes danger and exhales spectacle. You do not come to these films to untangle wires of logic but to bask in a primal kind of cinematic electricity that only a Cruise performance can conduct.

Women Who Own the Mission

One of the shining moments of this franchise over the years is just how they are able to have powerful, meaningful and pound-for-pound female characters throughout. This eighth film maybe has it lesser than previous ones but you still have Hayley Atwell and Pom Klementieff playing wildly different characters and holding their own in scintillating sequences as the film reaches its end. Atwell brings a mischievous volatility and charm while Klementieff is all cold fire and elegance in combat. They do not just survive scenes — they devour them. And that is no small feat given the gravitational pull of Cruise in this cinematic universe.

The film is in all parts boring, ponderous, convoluted, bewildering just as much as it is absolutely fantastical, immensely thrilling, full of adrenaline, wowing and even magical to an extent. It is not about having the perfect end but it is about giving a hat-tip to the franchise that has built over three decades.

Why So Much Hate?

There is just something poetic about how we have grown to be invested in these characters and this world consistently. It becomes a poetic, emotional culmination of everything that means the world to us, and more so to Cruise. He is not just playing Ethan Hunt — he is dragging him, gloriously and stubbornly, across the finish line of cinematic legacy.

The global reviews have been appalling to me and perhaps many who have been marking down factors that defeat the very purpose of the franchise in the first place maybe. And hey, just how can you not admire the sheer scale that this group of people has put in — and this isn’t to no avail, definitely not. The scale of production, the geography-spanning locations, the intense physicality, the bravado of the set pieces — they all scream passion and precision, and that kind of devotion deserves better than nitpicking disguised as critique.

I will admit though, on a parallel note, just how the first half tests your patience just because you have a 169-minute film that transcends back and forth with developments which do not seem important. The thing with films like these is that you never want to overly intellectualise it to a point that you lose the fun and berserk nature of these films, and at the same time, you do not want to dumb it down to just having one flashy and crazy action set piece after another — because hey, we have Michael Bay for that, don’t we? This is not about visual chaos, it is about orchestrated havoc, a ballet of demolition that balances thrill with narrative intention.

Mission Complete, Almost Perfectly

It is about finding that sweet spot where it seems like the right blend just enough to be the best of both worlds — a good balance. It is tough to crack but we have seen a few Mission: Impossible movies do that earlier. The thing with Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is that it veers on both ends often but the first half heavily tries to make sense of what should not be so demanding. But it does until it comes back to form and becomes the kind of film we love it to be in the second half of the film and mainly towards the end. It builds its emotional crescendo not through dialogue but through action, through sheer grit, through those lingering stares Cruise gives the camera — not as Ethan Hunt but as the man who made all of this impossible circus somehow feel inevitable.

In the end, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is maybe the “final” mission we are led to believe, at least for Tom Cruise. And it is interesting that the film does not try to give him an expected send-off or a montage goodbye, because you never know with Cruise. He is as eternal as the IMF itself, forever dangling from a helicopter or holding his breath for cinema. But it feels fitting and somehow also makes you wonder if there will ever be anyone who can come into film and show us this — it seems impossible, but we are talking about Mission: Impossible, where the only thing that’s impossible is nothing.

This film is not just an instalment in a franchise. It is a shrine built on Cruise’s iron will, McQuarrie’s stubborn craftsmanship and the audience’s unwavering hunger for spectacle that defies reason. And for all its faults, when it clicks, it soars with a freedom few blockbusters dare to reach. You do not walk out of it dissecting character motivations or plot intricacies — you walk out feeling like you've run a marathon through cinematic madness, gasping for breath and kind of ready to run it again.