The Reel Review
Tom Cruise is back as spymaster Ethan Hunt, in what is being billed as Cruise’s eighth and final chapter in the 30-year-long Mission Impossible action/adventure saga, set just after the events of 2023’s excellent Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning (Part 1). Hunt and his team of agents furiously work to save the planet from humanity-destroying sentient artificial intelligence named the Entity, that is taking control of the world’s nuclear arsenal.
Co-writer/director Christopher McQuarrie again rolls out a nonstop barrage of action and some pretty dazzling (and insane) stunts, with an all-star cast that includes Angela Bassett, Hannah Waddingham (Ted Lasso) rocking an impressive American accent, Janet McTeer, Nick Offerman, and a surprise from the very first MI film, along with the returning cast of Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg and Pom Klementieff as Hunt’s team and Esai Morales as their foe, the Entity’s former helper.
At nearly three hours long (a few minutes longer than even its predecessor), Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning easily could have been shortened by 30 minutes, much of that due to an unusual amount of story exposition. But it is such an entertaining film that you will forgive the length. See it on as large a screen as possible.
REEL FACTS
• When Paramount announced there would be a two year delay for this film, it also changed the name, making the prior Part 1 film’s subtitle irrelevant.
• Tom Cruise and Esai Morales performed their own stunts in the biplane scene, including when Cruise holds onto the wings of the aircraft as it spins upside down. The plane’s actual pilot wore a suit made out of green-screen material so as to be digitally removed and make it look like nobody is in the cockpit.
• Pom Klementieff was so good at her stunts that the crew nicknamed her Pom Cruise.
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