Cast: Tom Cruise, Simon Pegg, Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Esai Morales, Angela Bassett, Pom Klementieff, Henry Czerny, Holt McCallany, Nick Offerman, Janet McTeer, Hannah Waddingham, Tremmell Tillman, Shea Wiggham, Greg Tarzan Davis, Cary Elwes, Katie O’Brien

Written By: Christopher McQuarrie and Erik Jenderesen, based on the TV series Mission: Impossible

Directed By: Christopher McQuarrie

Notable Producers: Tom Cruise, Christopher McQuarrie, David Ellison, Dana Goldberg

Studio: Paramount pictures

Release Year: 2025

Runtime: 169 minutes

Audio Description Produced By: Icon Group

Written By: Need Credit

Narrated By: Anthony Hanson

what is It?: It’s the final countdown. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is follow the remaining members of the Impossible Mission Force on their last hurrah, as Ethan Hunt risks his life for all mankind. The Entity was not contained in Dead Reckoning, and has only spread and taken a stronger hold across the world. With most of the nuclear arsenal in its grasp, it is up to one man, to free dive to the bottom of the ocean as no one else can. But, this is the final mission, and as with all series Enders, all bets are off on who lives, who dies, and who tells their story.

What Works: When you actually get to the set pieces, the big action moments are kind of cool. I love that Tom cruise is one of the few actors overly committed to doing his own stunts, to his own detriment. So, if he can swim to the bottom of the ocean floor, I’m sure he did. Cruise’s unwavering commitment to trying to provide practicality in filmmaking at all costs is why his films play on the big screen.He presents realism by committing to the process of creating it.

And with a cast this impressive, which boasts a few Oscar nominees, seals the deal. I’m sure cruise could have gotten more involved, and in some cases, he should have. But the cast that is here, and notably the longest running cast members (cruise, Rhames, pegg) make you feel like they know they won’t be doing this again. There’s a love for what this was for them, and how it brought them a lot of money. And friendship.

Christopher McQuarrie is also a reliable director, who helped breathe life into the franchise, and gets to close out his great achievement. It is not his best work, or the best in the franchise, but he manages to find just enough to keep the slow train chugging along.

What Doesn’t Work: Hubris is a bitch. it feels like Cruise and McQuarrie believe their own perfection, and based on the gap between Dead Reckoning and final reckoning, I can be convinced reshoots happened. However, despite the action, all the reshoots had to be this near record amount of exposition the movie has, explaining every impossible task to us, like a petulant child doing a shitty magic trick. I don’t remember the coolest stunts from the previous films needing such elaborate discussion, which slows the film down, and stretches an unnecessary runtime. I’m sure the Honest Trailer for this mentions how much talking there is. I think Tom Cruise believes Covid made us all stupid, and therefore, the regular human couldn’t follow Dead Reckoning, so now he’s slowing it down, and explaining every detail.

It also can’t shake that esai Morales is just not an interesting villain, and The Entity as an AI threat has still been done before. Plus, I mentioned that I would have brought people back? Absolutely. First, did we kill off Jeremy Renner? If the world is literally about to end, you’d think Brandt could bother to participate a little. but, the big problem comes at the end, when Hayley Atwell has this non-emotional goodbye, because she’s essentially only been in this one film (as Final reckoning was originally Dead reckoning Part 2). She has not had the time to develop a connection with Ethan, and in the final moments, he’s left with a bunch of new faces. They weren’t sure how to say goodbye. Even a brief cameo from Monaghan, even if her character is unavailable, would have opened up Hunt at the end. Instead, the end feels cold.

The Audio Description: I’ve only noticed Icon recently, and I’m not sure of their experience with audio description, but they do some stuff well, and some is inexperience. For example, the action sequences are fantastic. I’d call it a rookie mistake to say someone is a familiar face, if we’re meeting them for the first time. And, the whole exposition scene has a lot of cutting back and forth that the AD team could never figure how how to contextualize. Even in the opening message for Ethan, we get a photo of someone important to the mission, but there’s no audio description for it.

Why You Might Like it: I wouldn’t put any of the films Rotten. I wouldn’t even put Final Reckoning at the bottom. it is flawed, but it has some killer action sequences, and heartfelt goodbyes. If you’ve been on this ride, you deserve to know how it ends.

Why You Might Not Like it: it is long, and it feels it. If you were not a fan of Dead reckoning, this won’t change anything.

Final Thoughts: Somehow the reliable team that has kept Mission Impossible so venerable for so long, stumbles a. Bit at the finish line. But the mission is possible, and Cruise and McQuarrie keep the franchise from self-destructing in 5, 4, 3, 2…

Fresh: 7.4/10