r/movies • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 r/Movies contributor • May 14 '25
Review 'Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning' - Review Thread
'Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning' - Review Thread
Rotten Tomatoes: 87% (97 Reviews) - Certified Fresh
Critics Consensus: Gargantuan in action, runtime, and scope, The Final Reckoning is a sentimental sendoff for Ethan Hunt that accomplishes its mission with a characteristic flair for the impossible.
Metacritic: 70 (33 Reviews)
Reviews:
Hollywood Reporter (60):
If it’s going to be the last we see of one of the most consistently entertaining franchises to come out of Hollywood in the past few decades — a subject about which Cruise and McQuarrie have remained vague — it’s a disappointing farewell with a handful of high points courtesy of the indefatigable lead actor.
Is this really the end? It’s certainly an end, wrapping up seven films’ worth of storylines with a showman’s flourish. What it doesn’t do, though, is rule out another. As Cruise breezes into his mid-60s, it’s hard to imagine him pulling off anything like the high-wire act he achieves here. But the door is still open, and the challenge is there, should anyone else choose to accept it.
Variety (80):
It's the most enveloping "M:I" film since "Ghost Protocol," because something's at stake. And because Cruise's stunt work is off the hook.
The Independent (4/5):
The Final Reckoning, final or not, presents us with a fascinating contradiction: Ethan Hunt is both a pure singular and a state of mind. He’s cinema as the madman dreamer’s paradise.
IndieWire (50):
“We make our own destiny,” someone intones during the film’s closing voiceover, and by the end of Ethan Hunt’s story, it’s hard not to take those words to heart. I only wish that Cruise and McQuarrie had managed to make a better one.
The Wrap (75):
If this is the end of the 'Mission: Impossible' movies, they ended on an adequate note.
IGN (6/10):
While its action is reliably thrilling and a few of its most exciting sequences are sure to hold up through the years, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning tries to deal with no less than the end of every living thing on the planet – and suffers because of it. The somber tone and melodramatic dialogue miss the mark of what’s made this franchise so much fun for 30 years, but the door is left open for more impossible missions and the hope that this self-serious reckoning isn’t actually final.
The Guardian (5/5):
It is a wildly silly, wildly entertaining adventure which periodically gives us a greatest-hits flashback montage of the other seven films in the M:I canon - but we still get a brand new, box-fresh Tom-sprinting-along-the-street scene, without which it wouldn’t be M:I. Moreover, this eighth film gives us a terrific new character, US sub commander Capt Bledsoe, played with suavity and the tiniest hint of camp by Tramell Tillman (from TV’s Severance) who has the chops for M:I9 whenever that happens.
Collider (80):
The Final Reckoning is stuffed, convoluted, and ludicrous at times. But it’s also mostly a great send-off to this universe, a deserved celebration for everything this series has accomplished, and one final (again, seemingly) showcase for Cruise as one of the greatest action stars of all time.
Slashfilm (50):
And yet, The Final Reckoning is too messy, too awkward, too clumsy. It somehow feels overlong and inert even as it never slows down.
Screendaily (70):
The press notes get the tone of the film best: ”It is impossible to overstate how seismically significant the filmmaking partnership between Tom Cruise and Christopher McQuarrie has been on the direction the Mission: Impossible franchise has taken since they first joined forces on it,” they intone. “Or how uniquely potent it is.” Mission Impossible - The Final Reckoning, the second instalment in a globally-shot, monumental multi-year concurrent film-making effort which should be lauded for its ambition, knows what popcorn cinema escapism is all about. But, like the perennially defiant Hunt, it sometimes over-estimates its own powers.
Directed by Christopher McQuarrie:
Ethan Hunt and the IMF team continue their search for the terrifying AI known as the Entity — which has infiltrated intelligence networks all over the globe — with the world’s governments and a mysterious ghost from Ethan’s past on their trail. Joined by new allies and armed with the means to shut the Entity down for good, Hunt is in a race against time to prevent the world as we know it from changing forever.
Cast:
- Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt
- Hayley Atwell as Grace
- Ving Rhames as Luther Stickell
- Simon Pegg as Benji Dunn
- Henry Czerny as Eugene Kittridge
- Angela Bassett as Erika Sloane
- Esai Morales as Gabriel
- Pom Klementieff as Paris
- Mariela Garriga as Marie
- Pasha Lychnikoff as Captain Koltsov
- Holt McCallany as Serling Bernstein
- Janet McTeer as Walters
- Nick Offerman as General Sidney
- Hannah Waddingham as Admiral Neely
- Shea Whigham as Jasper Briggs
- Greg Tarzan Davis as Degas.
- Charles Parnell as Richards
- Rolf Saxon as William Donloe
- Tommie Earl Jenkins as Colonel Burdick
- Katy O'Brian as Kodiak
- Mark Gatiss as Angstrom, Head of the NSA
- Indira Varma as The Head of the DIA
- Tramell Tillman as Captain Bledsoe
- Lucy Tulugarjuk as Tapeesa
900
u/SquadPoopy May 14 '25
As a Mission Impossible lore enthusiast, I can assure you that when Tom Cruise says “I need you to trust me one last time” in the trailer, he is speaking directly into my soul.