Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning (2025)

Director: Christopher McQuarrie

Cast: Tom Cruise, Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg*

Have I Seen it Before: Never, and maybe never again?

Did I Like It: Here’s a confession, if I haven’t already made it in previous reviews for the Mission: Impossible films. Most people are never more delighted during these films than when Ethan Hunt (Cruise) dangles off of increasingly precarious things. That’s the brand. That’s why the vast majority posters for this movie show a biplane flying upside down with Cruise holding on by one hand. That will gets butt into seats**.

I, on the other hand, am never more delighted in this series when they make references to the original Mission: Impossible (1996). I have a weird affection for that uneven first entry with the byzantine plot, even when I’m willing to admit that Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011) is likely the most satisfying entry, pound for pound. From Alec Baldwin’s muttering about the CIA Black Vault in Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (2015) through the White Widow (Vanessa Kirby) being the heiress to Max (Vanessa Redgrave), all the way to the return of Eugene Kittridge (Henry Czerny) in Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning (2023), McQuarrie either has the same soft spot for the first film as I do, or had an interest in making the story of Ethan Hunt one where what came before has an impact on what is still to come. A valid ambition in my eyes, either way.

The references to the original film abound here as well. I found the revelations that Jasper Briggs (Shea Whigham) is actually the son of Jim Phelps (Jon Voight) to be a little anemic, especially when it confirms finally and beyond all doubt that these films don’t share a continuity with the original television series.

But then there’s William Donloe (Rolf Saxon). The hapless mark in the aforementioned Black Vault, he was just a guy who knew how to manage a database. A man after my own heart, who go mistreated.

And he’s the secret heroe of the series, and steals every moment he’s in this film.

I am delighted, in that much at least, and that’s more than enough to recommend a movie.

Is this really the end for Ethan Hunt and company? Aside from dispensing with Luther Stickell in the first act, the film doesn’t seem like it wants to commit to a valedictory for the dangling man. This is as close as we’re going to get, and I hope it is the end. If for no other reason than I find it increasingly hard to believe that Scientology can give a man the tools he needs to do his own stunts into his 70s. This would be a good place to stop.

But if they want to do a spinoff series with Donloe, I’ll be the first one there on opening weekend.

*It took me all of my patience not to list Rolf Saxon in the main cast. More on that later. Also learned that he narrated the American broadcasts of Teletubbies. So there’s that.

**Enough butts in seats to cover a $400 million budget? One wonders, but maybe that’s a discussion for a different time.

Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One (2023)

Director: Christopher McQuarrie

Cast: Tom Cruise, Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg

Have I Seen it Before: Nope, but if the one religious figure who takes a clear stand on the vagaries of motion blurring wants me to do something, I do it. Especially when it means coming out to the theater for his nearly 300 million dollar* epic. If he starts making other demands of me, we’re just going to have to take those on a case by case basis.

Did I Like It: I like it when the following things happen to me:

- Spy movies make me feel like I could engage in espionage and intrigue, even though there is a plethora of airtight evidence that I would be absolutely crushed by any job with even slightly higher pressure than the one I currently have.

- I am witness to Tom Cruise proceeding with a series of increasingly preposterous stunts, which will inevitably culminate in what I can only assume is his somewhat hilarious demise.

- I get to sit in a darkened, air conditioned room and eat M & Ms. (Really, this would qualify when I get to sit in a brightly lit room with M & Ms, but they work even better in the dark)

- Mission: Impossible sequels make reference to the first—and for my money, the best—Mission: Impossible (1996).

On those qualifications, the movie is an unparalleled success, especially the last one, where with the inclusion of Eugene Kittridge (Henry Czerny) this feels like—more than any other film in the series—a direct sequel to the original. Sure, the plot may feel a little saggy in the middle and a little convoluted, but the impulse to label that as a complain about the movie should really be redefined as a return to form.

* Studios, if you keep doing that… Forget it. It’s not worth getting into it right now, but one imagines I’m going to have a lot more to same by the time Barbie and Oppenheimer roll into town.

Mission: Impossible II (2000)

Director: John Woo

Cast: Tom Cruise, Dougray Scott, Thandie Newton, Ving Rhames

Have I Seen it Before: Yeah.

Did I Like It: The Mission: Impossible series is improbably after twenty-five years of featuring Tom Cruise tempting death by jumping and hanging off things. 

But it hasn’t always been that way. I have always had a soft spot for <Mission: Impossible (1996)>, but completely understand when others say the plot is overly complex at best, downright convoluted at worst. Trying to course correct for that criticism, we are then offered this film.

All the ingredients are right. Tom Cruise—for all of his problems—has never appeared disinterested in making good movies. John Woo was at the peak of his action filmmaking, and had even proven his aptitude with more American fare like Hard Target (1993), Broken Arrow (1996), and Face/Off (1997). Certainly not intellectual fare, but crowd pleasing. He may have been the wrong choice for this series, but the thought that he wouldn’t generate some degree of memorable spectacle was a good idea, on paper. 

But nothing quite came together, one assumes in the hopes of offering up counter programming to its predecessor. It probably doesn’t help that the whole film centers around preventing a super flu outbreak, which today feels off, but I don’t think my opinion of the movie has changed much at all in the last twenty years.

Cruise has two modes throughout the film: smirking and concerned smirking. Maybe he was looking for a break after the marathon production that was Eyes Wide Shut (1999), but he’s rusty as a movie star here. The plot is warmed over Hitchcockian jewel thief material. The story is credited to Star Trek scribes Ronald D. Moore and Brannon Braga, but I always seem to remember that eventually credited screenwriter Robert Towne saying he cribbed the whole thing directly from Notorious (1946), but a quick search now indicates they came up with action sequences first, and Towne was later called in to string together a story. Not sure if this is patient zero for this practice, but that kind of screenwriting is happening more and more lately, and for my money it is the key problem in action films today.

This one just didn’t come together in any way, sadly. But don’t worry, the series—nor Cruise—has made a stinker since. One wishes that I could say the same about Woo (he hasn’t made much in the last twenty years), and poor Dougray Scott was right on the precipice of having Hugh Jackman’s life, but for this film.

Mission: Impossible -- Fallout (2018)

Director: Christopher McQuarrie

Cast: Tom Cruise, Henry Cavill*, Ving Rhames, Rebecca Ferguson

Have I Seen it Before: Certainly.

Did I Like It: I was a little down on Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (2015) as by that fifth entry in the series, the sameness that plagued the television series was starting to just bubble to the surface. The prospect of the series now settling into a regular cast and a regular director only increased the fear that said sameness would be the order of the day for the foreseeable future.

I’m happy to report that it appears McQuarrie may be just getting warmed up, but at the moment, he is content to make subtle changes to the tried and true format. Giving Hunt and company recurring heavy (Sean Harris) at first blush feels like more descending into monotony, but for this series it is a breath of fresh air. 

Up until this point, Hunt has been presented as an unassailable movie spy. Here, it’s sort of delightful, a measure more realistic, and includes an added dimension of suspense into the final set piece that it appears Hunt has no clue how to fly a helicopter, but must do so anyway. One might spend some spell of time after seeing the film wondering how Hunt could have been in the line of work that he was for as long as he had and not get more expert in the operation of various types of vehicles, but that time would be ill spent, and I don’t recommend it.

Even if the promise of these new elements reverts back to the mean while McQuarrie is at the helm, the hand at the wheel is steady enough that I will still enjoy entries in this series, even if they don’t continue to try and surprise.

*Will it ever be possible to look at Cavill’s mustache in this film and not revel in the reality that it is pointedly one thing that made Justice League (2017) a bizarre, unlovable Frankenstein’s Monster of a film? I think not.

Mission: Impossible III (2006)

Director: J.J. Abrams

Cast: Tom Cruise, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ving Rhames, Michelle Monaghan

Have I Seen it Before: Sure. Look, some people are down on Cruise as a person, but for the most part he isn’t interested in making a bad movie, so I’m there when that improbably ageless face is plastered on a movie poster.

Did I Like It: Yes, but at the same time…

I remember thinking after I initially saw this movie in the theater that this is a movie series that has found its perfect calibration. Some have said that the plot of the first Mission: Impossible (1996) was too byzantine (it isn’t, but it may take a viewing or two to fully enjoy), and that Mission: Impossible II (2000) was as insubstantial and dumb as a movie as is likely to ever be made (it is), whereas this one blends the stunt show qualities of the latter with the actual spy fun of the former.

That’s true, but it all feels less somehow after it’s had a decade to simmer in my head. Abrams makes his directorial debut here. There is nary a lens flare to be found, which undercuts a lot of dunderheaded criticism of his cinematic output, even if the lens flares have never bothered me as much as others. He has brought his TV skills to bear here, offering the closest thing to an Alias: The Motion Picture as we are likely to get.

I just wished I liked Alias more. It’s a fine show, but it never lit my imagination on fire, and so it is also with this film. The stunts are here. The intrigue is here. I just wish that the ambition to bring some of the better qualities of the television series to the big screen had stayed. I wish the films were closer to a heist movie, and less an attempt to give the world an American James Bond. I also wish that the IMF team was less an elite team of CIA employees and more of the disparate team of skilled civilian contractors that Phelps and team were. The previous films don’t aim for this, but it struck me more here. What we have here is certainly better than the nadir of the second film, but there is still a lot of material left to be mined. Unfortunately, the success of the this entry and subsequent attempts in a similar mold indicate that that is probably not going to happen any time soon.

Mission: Impossible (1996)

Director: Brian de Palma

Cast: Tom Cruise, Ving Rhames, Jon Voight, Emmanuelle Béart

Have I Seen it Before: The time is May, 1996. Having just escaped the gulag of the 5th grade, I am now facing the indignity of watching the movie from the backseat of my mom’s Volvo, my head contorted to try to piece together what was happening, and only intermittently succeeding. My neck hurts just thinking about the first time I saw the movie. Whatever anyone says, kids, drive-ins are meant to be enjoyed from the front seat.

Did I Like It: I think most of America didn’t need my mother’s sensible station wagon to be left somewhat befuddled by the plot. Modern audience, too, might be lost in the peak-90s tech that moves the plot along. It is truly amazing that a film exists where equal wait and suspense is given to an exploding helicopter as it is to a deep dive into usenet groups.

But for my money, while the series found an interesting groove thanks to later entries (the less said about the flimsy and tonally strange M:I-2 (2000), the better), this first film ages the best. It just needs a few viewings to keep straight the various chess moves that force the aforementioned helicopter into a TGV tunnel.

The original TV show—before Mission: Impossible became synonymous with Tom Cruise improbably hanging from things—was always a cat and mouse game. The show wasn’t always great, as is evidenced by the few times I’ve attempted to binge-watch episodes of the 1966-1973 series—but the true genius behind the film is where the audience is part of the cat and mouse game. Indeed, de Palma may have been the only director who could have pulled off this quality. We’re not sure—aside from Cruise—who we can trust. More often than not, our assumptions are not rewarded. Emilio Estevez is in the picture! He’s a movie star, maybe not on the caliber of Cruise, but he’s a delight in those hockey movies with the ducks in them, surely, he’s going to stick around. Nope. He doesn’t even get the Goose treatment of dying as the set-up to the third act. 

The team is on a mission that goes disastrously in that first reel, but ah ha! The film’s first surprise? The heroes of the piece are the target of an entirely different IMF team. This back and forth goes pretty much up until the last act, when just as it feels as if the bad guys are getting away with the whole thing, Ethan Hunt (Cruise) pulls off one more mask and the plot, mostly comes together. For the most part, is a remarkably thoughtful deconstruction of the source material, especially for a movie that based on a TV show that was content to repeat plots whole-cloth and hope no one would notice.

But that does lead to one interesting question: why does the film work better on repeat viewings? I think the answer may lie in a false attempt at suspense in the the third act. After Hunt and Phelps (Voight) are reunited, it’s absolutely clear that Phelps has been the traitor all along. De Palma takes us through Hunt’s piecing together what happened. And yet, the final scenes on the train try their damndest to obscure the identity of Job. Given that Hunt’s one strategic flaw is not wanting to believe until the last moment that Claire (Béart) has also been playing both sides, had that sequence leaned more into that question, or if the mystery of Job’s identity had been kept obscured until the last possible moment, maybe people wouldn’t have felt so discombobulated by the film on first blush.

Or maybe I just have some issues with my Mom’s late, sainted Volvo that I’m still working through…