Movie of the Week: Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning (2025)

I can’t say I’m a Mission: Impossible fan considering I’ve only seen four of these movies (I really like Rogue Nation!) and I was mixed at-best on the last one. However, I had four hours to kill the other day and a three-hour movie at a theater 20 minutes away was the best option, so I thought I would give Final Reckoning a shot. I saw it in a packed IMAX screening with a bunch of dads and film bros who gasped and oohed and clapped at the end, which is probably the perfect environment. And yes Tom, I got a large popcorn.

For the first act, I was pretty sure I was in for a looooong movie because you have to sit through approximately one billion flashbacks from previous entries. I can appreciate the “here’s what you missed last week on Mission: Impossible” part of it (especially as someone who only sorta knows what’s going on), but the movie doesn’t start proper for probably like 45 minutes and it really turned me off.

But once it gets going, it goes. It's one of the better “we have to get the thing to get the thing to connect to the thing to override the thing” movies I’ve seen (The Rise of Skywalker is probably the worst example), considering I didn’t even realize that’s what was happening until the final mission was laid out. For a while, it's just great sequence after great sequence. Tom gets himself on a submarine and hangs out with Trammel Tillman (who just walks up to the plate and hits double after double here - get this man in a Wes Anderson movie!) and runs on a treadmill inside the submarine. That's movie magic.

With that being said, there's probably too much “bro just trust me” from Tom because, although all of the missions over eight movies end up being quite possible (there’s a point in this one where somebody, I think it’s Simon Pegg, says like, "IT'S ONE IN A TRILLION" and he's serious, those are the numbers he crunched and the calculations he calculated, and it sounds so silly because the number is ludicrously high), it’s just exhausting hearing everyone tell this man it can’t be done. It’s Tom Cruise! He will do it! Just get this man an aircraft carrier and shut the fuck up!

Meanwhile, there's a very serious nuclear warfare movie happening and it's separately great. Other than Nick Offerman’s presence being off-putting, all of the shit with the asshole, destruction-obsessed white guys stressing President Angela Bassett the fuck out was maybe the best stuff in the movie. McQuarrie basically becomes a different director with those scenes and it’s awesome. Go watch Fail Safe!

Apparently, AMC Georgetown is filled with Letterboxd users, which is probably why I enjoyed it as much as I did. I heard all of the following when leaving the theater:

"I always give it an extra half-star because he does his own stunts."

"J.J. Abrams loves his mystery boxes!:

"He owns the world record for longest underwater stunt scene!"

Anyway, fun popcorn movie. I will never watch it at home.