The new video game console has been looking forward to the new video game console for years. The night before Christmas Eve you can hardly sleep with excitement – and then it is actually under the Christmas tree. But instead of being able to plug them in and get started, the parents insist on reading the – particularly extensive – instructions (including a short history of all previous video game consoles) beforehand. This is how it feels that the rumbles $ 300 to $ 400 million “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning” to look. It should be the outstanding conclusion of 30 years of “mission: impossible”, but the crowning fire work has charging inhibitions.
After the grandiose “Mission: Impossible-Dead Reckoning” (5 stars from film starts) has delivered a breathless 160-minute goosebumps cinema pure, the first half of the grand finale, who has been sitting on the “Rogue Nation”, now uses the first half of the grand finale: Explanations on the technical AI-Schnickschnack and the subsequent renovation of the previous “Mission: Impossible” films to give the appearance that everything had inevitable to this crucial confrontation between Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and the “entity”, called Super-KI. The result: a long stuttering start until two truly grand action sequences are still pulling around the rudder.
A AI may not be such a perfect adversary because you have to use explanations and exposure all the time all the time.
In the meantime, the entity has almost taken over the entire cyberspace. No information saved online, no photo and no video, is more safe from manipulation. Her last goal: the nuclear arsenale of the eight global nuclearnations. Because the United States's nuclear missiles are best secured, there are still about 72 hours until the entity will also tear themselves under the nail. However, the US President Erika Sloane (Angela Bassett) and her defense minister Sidney (Nick Offerman) do not want to get it: As soon as the entity has taken over all other arsenale, the USA prevention its own nuclear weapons onto the switching centers of the nuclear patties (including Paris, London and Moscow) to prevent the KI wipes out.
Even a separate US metropolis is to be wiped out just because it would be the only way to prove to the other nations that the nuclear strikes do not apply to them, but solely to the entity. Nevertheless, the plan would demand at least 100 million lives. The only chance to prevent such a disaster: the president would have to trust her unadorned agent Ethan Hunt one last time. She has to grant him completely free hand and all resources of the US Army so that he can attract the entity together with the pickpocket Grace (Hayley Atwell), the professional killer Paris (Pom Klementieff) as well as his Hacker-Kumpels Luther (Ving Rhames) and Benji (Simon Pegg) in a trap …
That didn't work at James Bond
The idea of linking existing parts of a film series even more afterwards has already been badly considered to the 007 competition with “James Bond-Specter”-and in “The Final Reckoning” it seems rather half-bodied than actually cleverly thought. This one McGuffin, in which it was never finally dissolved, what was actually behind it? It is suddenly important now (if not particularly). This one type who has played an medium but interchangeable role since the predecessor? He is suddenly the son of one of the central string pullers in the series. And this secondary figure that could have been filled with a completely new actor without any problems? This is suddenly a guy who already in the first “Mission: Impossible“Run through the picture a few times.
In itself, these are all Easter Eggs that fans are welcome to serve as a small nostalgia bush in between. But it cannot actually be that “The Final Reckoning” simmered for 90 minutes on the industrial flame. Especially since it also has to be explained so much: The first half of the film is full of flashbacks on previous films and sometimes even on events that are just half an hour. The plan, as you could possibly stop the supposedly almighty entity, is so complicated (not to be confused with clever) that it takes 90 minutes and lots of new side figures to finally maneuver Ethan Hunt for the first of only two major action sequences in the Pacific Arctic Ocean.
With the double-decker flight sequence, Tom Cruise is definitely in conversation for the best action sequence of the cinema year.
But once he has arrived there, it also delivers – and how! With the underwater sequence, you can no longer get out of astonishment: When Tom Cruise evades you to the gas-based submarine and, above all, its propeller, your breath will stop more than once. Especially in the scenes inside the (!) U-boots running around on the sea floor, you simply feel that more value was placed on real sets than with all other action franchises of this size: If the toned torpedoes in the storage room on Ethan Hunt are actually at weight and are not only pixels as in a video game, where you can simply try it again anyway. At the end of the sequence, Ethan Hunt then grows again in such an absurd heroic way that one would have immediately broken out into the ironic laughter on this planet. Only Tom Cruise is taken off.
The absolute action highlight is-and that's how it should actually be-actually the final: After Tom Cruise was already clinging to an Airbus A400m outside in “Mission: Impossible-Fallout” and later delivered a helicopter duel in the same film with Henry Cavill, “The Final Reckoning” leads these two unforgettable action highlights in one Incredible stunt cascade: As can already be seen in the trailer, this time he hangs on a double-decker plane at a lofty height-and what he does there is certainly one of the best action sequences (if not for the best) of the cinema year! In this way, Tom Cruise and Ethan Hunt can disappear in the crowd at the end-only the best “Mission: Impossible” film, you have to search for it further in the row.
Conclusion: “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning” begins with a bumpy attempt and a much explanatory look back on the paths of a great disappointment. Especially with the sequences under water and in the air, the action spectacle gets the curve in time to give Tom Cruise after 30 years as an Ethan Hunt a non-overwhelming but still worthy farewell.
We saw “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning” at the Cannes Film Festival 2025, where he celebrated his world premiere out of competition.