First Take: Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning - two hours of Tom Cruise… inflating his ego some more, let’s say it like that

SYNOPSIS: Ethan Hunt and the IMF team continue their search for the terrifying AI known as the Entity, with the world’s governments and a mysterious ghost from Ethan’s past on their trail.

Spoiler free as usual. Because the summer of cinema has begun.

Exactly 24 hours before tackling this one, two of my closest film nerd friends made the short walk over to that Hypersense screen and fed back to me that I should lower my expectations. I’m glad they did, because bringing the curtain down on 30 years of a beloved franchise felt like a task too far for Christopher McQuarrie and his team. We all knew how good Dead Reckoning was back in 2023, so to put this out as the follow-up… yeah, I smell a rant brewing.

To put it simply McQ has a lot to answer for. The 2 hour 49 minute runtime is one of them. I know they wanted to go big for this final act but surely some of that first hour could’ve been trimmed down, with a lot of exposition - but from about 1 hour 10 onwards it feels a bit more like a Mission Impossible movie, especially when we get the trademark “we totally did this for real” sequences towards the final act. Beyond that, McQ and Erik Jendresen’s script just feels a bit overblown, with elements that are hard to believe, some cheesy dialogue at times, but, and this is the big bit, it’s somehow able to tie all 8 Missions together in one plot. It’s shot brilliantly by Fraser Taggart, taking full advantage of IMAX systems for those of you seeing it on the biggest of the premium large format screens, but musically the film loses a lot, as long-time assistants to Lorne Balfe (composer of the last two MI films) in Max Aruj and Alfie Godfrey handled the score - and you can tell.

Cast-wise, there’s one ego - sorry, star - who takes the spotlight. I’ve respected Tom Cruise’s work to stabilise the film industry since Covid, the last MI was of course the first production back shooting during the pandemic, but this movie is him saying thanks for the paycheques, Paramount, I’m off to Warners now. Understandably his love of the craft is front and centre, he’s hanging off planes, baring all in diving sequences, and being himself as ever, but age is catching up with him. The rest of the cast are great though - Simon Pegg and Hayley Atwell form the core of that IMF team, flanked by Pom Klementieff, Greg ‘Tarzan’ Davis, Ving Rhames, small bit parts for Hannah Waddingham, Mark Gatiss, a decent villain in Esai Morales and of course a welcome return for Angela Bassett and a few other talents from across the series’ history. As a send-off for a franchise which has seen 5 directors over 30 years, it is serviceable, but as a standalone film thank god the credits rolled when they did.

THE VERDICT

The Final Reckoning is just not a Mission film. Overtly long, too bloated, and showing signs of fatigue, the time really has come for the franchise to be rested now. To break even this film has to make a billion dollars (because of the delays due to the SAG and WGA strikes, we are talking about a record $400million budget plus the marketing costs). If opening week here in the UK is anything to go by… I hope the accountants at Paramount are ready to reforecast their futures.

RATING: 3.5/5