Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning (Photo – Paramount Pictures and Skydance)
Summer promises a sluice of action films, and Mission Impossible—The Final Reckoning, starring Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt, is the first out of the gate.
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning
Directed by Christopher McQuarrie – 2025
Reviewed by Garrett Rowlan
I shall not attempt to summarize the plot, suffice it to say that some AI machine called “The Entity” is poised to either destroy or enslave the world, unless Cruise, as Ethan Hunt, can disarm or decommission it by finding its source code.
My mind wandered amid the seat-rattling soundtrack—my ears were bruised, but my lower back felt better from the massage delivered by pounding drums and rumbling bass notes—to Tom Cruise himself and the oft-touted selling point that he performs his own stunts.
Wikipedia loosely defines performance art as an art exhibition created through actions executed by the artist, and what Cruise is exhibiting is, essentially, himself. We see the airplane-hanging stunts and the prolonged underwater scenes knowing, of course, that Cruise didn’t die while filming. (I think we’d have heard about it if he had.) It becomes performance as performance art, breaking the fourth wall between character and audience as a selling point.
The cleverness of this approach lies in how it allows the filmmakers not only to stretch credulity but to flaunt it. We don’t need to believe that his character could survive multiple beatings, miles-long falls, or underwear-only submersion in Arctic waters because he does his own stunts. We’re in on the joke, so to speak.
Besides, The Final Reckoning is apparently just that: the final installment in the Mission Impossible series. The film’s backstory is interlarded with clips from the five previous entries, turning the movie into a sort of greatest-hits package, complete with a pat on its own back.
So, is it entertaining? There are the stunts which are great but embedded amid somewhat tedious and stiff-jawed doomsday talk, ticking clocks, and dialogue like “There’s one chance in a trillion.” The movie doesn’t know when enough is enough.
It’s a somewhat soulless experience leavened only by Ving Rhames as a Tekkie with a mellifluous voice who delivers the film’s final words. Tom Cruise listens with an expression just human enough to dampen down my thought that perhaps Ethan Hunt was a zombie, one able to survive assaults that would’ve killed anyone else five times over.
As for the coming attractions—a half-hour of summer action flick previews—it’s clear that if you think The Final Reckoning is over the top, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
> Playing at Regal Paseo, Landmark Pasadena Playhouse, IPIC Theaters, Regency Academy Cinemas, Regal Edwards Alhambra Renaissance, AMC Atlantic Times Square 14, AMC Santa Anita 16, and Laemmle Glendale.
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