Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning shows the power of a Sub, a Key and a USB

Tom Cruise has always been famous, has often been weird, and is now ubiquitous. Tom wants us all to have a good time at his movies, and luckily, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning (a terrible name for SEO) is a real good time.

Two years after Dead Reckoning, a film this reviewer did not like, expectations were low for this summer blockbuster. Maybe Cruise and director Christopher McQuarrie spent those years reckoning with criticism, because The Final Reckoning is just as farcical yet feels far more relaxed than its predecessor.

The Final Reckoning does take a while to get going. The first hour is a long-winded recap of Dead Reckoning. Here’s a shorter version: A soulless AI called the Entity is taking over the world, one cyber network at a time. Ethan Hunt, disavowed by his Government, had put together yet another crack team to stop the Entity (involving blah blah disguises, blah blah cruciform key, blah blah running) but they failed. The Final Reckoning starts a few months later with the Entity mid-world-mind-control. Hunt and team realise that the only way to stop the Entity is by using a ‘poison pill’ which is, I kid you not, a combination of a chunky USB, a portable hard drive and an ugly necklace. There are plenty of familiar MI tropes, like Ethan Hunt being the ONLY PERSON (out of 8 billion) who will not become corrupted by the Entity’s moral mind control. But once Hunt’s plan is in place, the film kicks up a gear.

And things just get crazier and crazier. In a film about the potential annihilation of humanity, Cruise seems to be trying to lighten the mood. Perhaps Hunt has experienced so much trauma that the only natural response is to laugh, fall over and whack a henchman with a bloody meat hammer, but Cruise’s new attitude to the character is a refreshing change.

Cruise is aided by a large company of eloquent and attractive actors all completely bought in to the absurd premise. Bar poor Esai Morales, who is tasked with being, ahem, the non-entity, they are universally exciting. Hayley Atwell’s Grace is winning where Pom Klementieff’s Paris is dangerous, the assassin given far more bandwidth than in Dead Reckoning. Her chemistry with Greg Tarzan Davis (Intelligence Agent Degas) is off the charts. Plus Angela Bassett is mouth-wobblingly great, and the film makes room for stalwarts Ving Rhames and Simon Pegg’s separate emotional arcs.

Then there’s Hannah Waddingham and Trammell Tillman, who play small, crucial parts in some cool submarine scenes and are equally luminous. A cast this big allows non-white characters and women to shine, each with an emphasis on athleticism and angst. Cruise often cedes the heroism to powerful female characters. They kick, they trick and they stick it to the man (being er, the joint chiefs). And McQuarrie and Erik Jendresen’s script has the audacity to deliver mere minutes of Janet McTeer, Holt McCallany and Nick Offerman with fleeting roles that still matter.

What The Final Reckoning doesn’t include is a single reference to Ilsa Faust. Rebecca Ferguson has been wiped from the film’s memory, a fascinating move, given how central she was to the middle MI films, and yet she’s not really missed.

Of course the film is full of bombs to detonate and myriad stunts: in the deep water, the ice, the earth and in the air. The film strikes a lovely balance between scenes of Cruise alone doing something fancy and dangerous and those with the rest of the cast on their group adventures. There are people to care about, alliances forged and lives lost in the pursuit of saving the world.

The Final Reckoning doesn’t feel like the last Mission: Impossible film, but it does feel like the end of an era. I would choose to accept this mission again, with or without Ethan Hunt.

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning hits cinemas on 21st May 2025.