Review of 'Mission Impossible: 'Dead Reckoning' and 'Final Reckoning'

May 2025

With all the promotion of Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning, set to debut in U.S. theaters in the next few days, I thought it was high time to see Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning, released in 2023, and which is actually Part 1 of the two-part story which will conclude with The Final Reckoning.

So I saw Dead Reckoning on Paramount+ last night. And I was struck by several things, all of which have been inexorably building over this eight-movie run, which, as we all know, began as one of the best television series in history:

1. Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt has been getting more and more like the best secret agent in movie history, i.e., James Bond. Hunt is a far better fighter than anyone ever was in the Mission Impossible TV team. In fact, the strength of that team resided in its group prowess, and while Hunt has an impressive group behind him, he clearly has powers not only equal to Bond’s but sometimes approach Superman’s. I mean, he leaps more than tall buildings, and in Dead Reckoning he jumps off a jagged mountainside, high above a fast-moving train he’s attempting to intercept.

2. Cruise’s Hunt shares another Bondian characteristic: a penchant for beautiful women. In Dead Reckoning there are at least a handful. My favorite is Ilsa Faust, played by Rebecca Ferguson, most recently in a crucially starring role in Silo. Much like Bond’s women, Hunt’s are not only beautiful but keenly intelligent and resourceful, and they’re central to events in which the narrative turns.

3. Whereas the MI team on television were invited to lend a hand in reducing or stopping significant challenges to US security, Hunt and his crew are called upon to stop challenges to the world order that verge on jeopardizing humanity itself. In it that sense, Hunt may be even a little more than Bondian, and in Dead Reckoning he approached Terminator territory, fighting an AI menace that -- in the opinion of at least some so-called experts -- has become since 2023 the greatest threat our species has faced, and in this case engendered.

I don’t share that view, but I do look very much forward to see how it all turns out on the screen in The Final Reckoning very soon.

December 2025

Well, the best laid plans and all that. As much as I really enjoyed Dead Reckoning when I streamed it on Paramount Plus this past May, and said I’d be back soon with a review of Final Reckoning (Part 2 of Dead Reckoning), which was opening soon in theaters and I intended to see ... I guess the beaches and lakes and restaurants and other blandishments of Cape Cod were just too persuasive.

But I did manage to see MI: Final Reckoning last night on Paramount Plus, where it started streaming yesterday, and I thought it was great, for all kinds of reasons. Here, without spoilers, are some of them:

1. As the eighth and (at this point, at least) the final Tom Cruise MI, Final Reckoning continued doing a fine job of bringing into play elements from the previous seven movies. I guess my favorite was bringing back the Phelps story, which made this eight-movie arc even more a direct descendant of the Mission Impossible on television, where of course the story was born with Phelps in command.

2. I said in my review of Dead Reckoning that the enemy being AI made Ethan Hunt more modern than Bond (at least so far). In every Bond movie, an evil human being has been the prime enemy. There were evil humans to be sure in Dead Reckoning and Final Reckoning, but the worst of the villains indubitably is an AI. Thus not only did Final Reckoning delve into Terminator territory, you can throw in Tron, and while we’re at it, War Games and lots of other literally bloodless arch-villians as well.

3. To be clear, as I’ve been saying in lots of places these days, I’m not concerned about AI replacing us, destroying us, or anything that’s been a favorite of fiction at least since Karel Čapek’s R.U.R more than a century ago. And I like those fictions a lot -- but they’re fictions. And as far as fiction about AI goes, I like Asimov’s robots/androids and their struggles even more, which sometimes do us harm, but also do us a lot of good.

4. Final Reckoning has some powerful star power. Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hall is a truly memorable character, because he’s well written and as well as well acted. Same for the MI team, both in Final Reckoning and the previous MI movies. And I have to say Angela Bassett as US President was superb, as well all as all the other heroes and villains that play out a taut story in which millions if not billions of lives are at stake. (It was also great to see Tramell Tillman -- Severance! -- in charge of a crucial vessel at sea.)

5. And the action scenes are first rate in every natural environment on Planet Earth, that is, land, sea, and air. In those scenes, Hunt is every bit as impressive as Bond.

6. I’ll just also say that in the midst of all this action, Final Reckoning has a deep and impressive moral core.

If I have any disappointment, well, Cruise has made clear that this is his last Ethan Hunt story. I hope he changes his mind. And gets the recognition he -- and everyone associated with this movie -- amply deserve.