Review: 'The Final Reckoning' and 'Dead Reckoning' are an unceremonious finale for the 'Mission: Impossible' franchise
After delivering the "Mission" saga's best entry in "Fallout," Tom Cruise and Christopher McQuarrie's two-part finale tripped at the finish line
Everyone knows the Greek myth of Icarus, right?
In his hubris and ambition, Icarus flew too close to the sun, and his waxen wings melted. He fell into the ocean and drowned.
The 2010s were a dicey decade for Tom Cruise.
Apart from “Ghost Protocol” and “Rogue Nation,” it was littered with box office-bombs (“Edge of Tomorrow”), critical mediocrity (“Jack Reacher”) or both (“Oblivion,” “The Mummy”). Re-teaming with Christopher McQuarrie on “Fallout” proved to be an inflection point, with the film becoming the most critically-acclaimed and highest-grossing entry in the “Mission: Impossible” franchise.
It allowed Cruise to finish the decade back on top, but the pandemic looked to derail his next act: the long-gestating “Top Gun” sequel, primed for a 2020 release. It was even considered as a potential booster for Paramount+ subscriptions. Instead, it became Cruise’s greatest box-office success ever, and he earned his first Oscar nomination in 23 years as one of its producers.
So, how does a man who is constantly pushing himself to the limits – cinematically and personally – try to top that one-two punch? Well, with a one-two “Mission” mega-project. “Dead Reckoning” was set to follow in the footsteps of two-part conclusions, as “Harry Potter,” “Twilight,” “Hunger Games” or even “Avengers” before it.
Unfortunately, it was immediately hamstrung by pandemic shutdowns, and the option to shoot back-to-back immediately disintegrated. Production on “Part One” lasted the better part of two years, and the release was overshadowed by Barbenheimer. The pic cost $100 million more than its predecessor yet yielded a global box office that came in over $200 million behind “Fallout.”
The box office phenomenon of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” can only take so much blame, however. “Dead Reckoning” is proof positive that the third time sometimes isn’t the charm, with McQ spinning his wheels on everything from Ethan Hunt and Ilsa Faust’s relationship to a thinly-sketched criminal backstory for our hero. That backstory is ever so loosely tied to the film’s antagonist, Gabriel (Esai Morales), who is a marked step down from the franchise high of “Fallout” baddies. Morales was a woeful recast (and miscast) after scheduling issues caused Nicholas Hoult to drop out.
Gabriel isn’t a lone wolf, though, with McQ and Cruise setting their sights on using their favorite franchise to take a defiant stance on A.I., with The Entity being the faceless, almost symbolic foe. Unfortunately, this leads to multiple monotonous scenes of characters in rooms talking about its limitless power and its perceived threat to the world. While “Fallout” moved like a supersonic freight train, “Dead Reckoning” grinds to a halt to tell us about this great new threat, too infrequently showing us what makes it so powerful. Pom Klementieff’s Paris, despite having little to no dialogue, is the only memorable threat in the film for this exact reason. She’s a force of nature, rumbling through Rome, spraying machine gun fire and eventually going toe-to-toe with Ethan in Venice.
Two other key elements that speak to the spinning tires-feel are the new brunette for Cruise to smolder at and the usually show-stopping stunt work. When Rebecca Ferguson made the wise decision to dedicate her time to leading other projects (“Dune,” Apple TV’s “Silo”), that meant she had to be unceremoniously written out. Her limited screen time and undercooked send-off here opens the door for Hayley Atwell. Unfortunately, the disparity between the two in terms of natural charisma and the quality of the writing is too substantial to ignore. After Ethan’s respective arcs with Julia (Michelle Monaghan) and Ilsa, was it really vital to introduce another woman for him to fixate on? It’s simply too familiar for a seventh entry.
Speaking of familiar, who doesn’t love a vehicular chase through a European city? The motorbike sequence through Paris in “Fallout” with a last-ditch escape was exceptional, so let’s just run it back in Rome, but this time with a comically small car. If that doesn’t get your juices flowing, maybe a half-assed fight and foot chase through Venice, which pales in comparison to the electric foot chase through London in “Fallout.”
The finale, which includes the motorbike BASE jump and train crash/climb, is plastered with shoddy CGI and blue screen work. The BASE jump stands in the shadow of the HALO jump from “Fallout,” while the work on the train has the most egregious effects in maybe any of these films.
“Part Two” production was struck by the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes, and the financial failure of “Part One” piling on top of that resulted in a delay and retitle. The filming of “The Final Reckoning” dragged all the way to the beginning of 2025, and the marketing campaign since then has made it crystal clear – this is us going on a mission with Cruise’s Hunt “one last time.” After the disappointment of “Dead Reckoning,” surely McQ and Co. would pull themselves together one last time, right? With all the time to rewrite and replan and reshoot this as a grand finale, this series can only go out with a bang that an iconic, 29-year-old franchise deserves.
Unfortunately, after years of getting away with writing and rewriting on the fly, building plots around stunt set pieces and figuring out the rest later, hope as a strategy has failed. The better part of this film’s first hour has TikTok-level editing, showing us countless (almost random) clips of prior “Mission” films. This is partly an attempt to underscore the film’s ambitions as a grand finale, which is extremely heavy-handed, and partly to clumsily reintroduce certain plot points and character threads. This maddening editing continues throughout the film, though, with McQ sometimes showing us events that happened only minutes ago – sometimes multiple times. It’s as if they realize the plot has been so shoddily pasted together and over complicated that they don’t trust the audience to keep up.
Speaking of editing and poor plotting, this is the longest “Mission” at just shy of three hours. That’s already daunting on paper, but in practice it’s one of the most egregious blockbuster missteps in recent memory. The first true set-piece – where Ethan finally accesses the Sevastopol submarine that crashed at the start of “Dead Reckoning” – doesn’t take place until around the two-hour mark.
The film is once again overpopulated with droll dialogue scenes that threaten to explain the plot to within an inch of its life. Even worse, the typically electric supporting cast is reduced to Ethan Hunt apostles, spending most of the film regurgitating why we “have” to trust the hero. Even Grace (Atwell) and Paris (Klementieff), who were both at odds with Ethan on some level in the last pic, are almost religiously devoted to his cause. It’s mind-numbing writing like this that might put you to sleep well before the first big stunt sequence arrives. I won’t bother getting into the half-hearted killing off of Ving Rhames’ Luther as it’s treated with about as much significance as Rebecca Ferguson in the last entry.
As for the villain, we’re once again confronted with Gabriel, but this time he’s been cranked up to Looney Tunes-levels of laughable. He briefly appears in the opening act of the film to remind the audience that he even exists, although now he’s trying to harness The Entity rather in cahoots with it. The next time we see Gabriel in any meaningful capacity is in the film’s final 30 minutes, as he maniacally leads Ethan on an aerial chase, while the rest of the crew defuse a bomb.
Sound familiar? Yes, it’s the exact ending of “Fallout,” but with biplanes instead of helicopters. It’s a fun novelty but once again proves that recycling the bones of past “Mission” moments fails to reach those original heights. The buzz generated by viral marketing and behind-the-scenes clips calling it the most dangerous stunt yet can only carry us so far.
Tom Cruise has starred in, produced – and on some uncredited level, written and directed – the great American action film series. Across three decades, he’s managed to rehabilitate and reinvent the franchise, just as he’s managed to do the same with his public image. Cruise’s ability to endure alongside “Mission,” regardless of his real-world or cinematic failings, stands as his greatest achievement.
Becoming the “President of Movies” in the eyes of cinephiles and entertaining millions around the world into his 60s, it’s easy to see why it’s hard to walk away. But at a certain point, leaving the game while you’re on top needs to outweigh the temptation to raise the bar to an unachievable level. Watching Cruise blaze across the sky before plummeting to the earth, putting a final nail in the coffin of this franchise, is a fitting final image.
Of course, Cruise wouldn’t dare let himself actually be killed off. Any real finality in “The Final Reckoning” is in name alone, and the legacy of these final two “Mission” pics will remain an unremarkable conclusion to an otherwise remarkable Hollywood saga.
Star Rating: 2.5 out of 5
“Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning” is now playing in theaters.