Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning (2025) review — The ultimate Ethan Hunt adventure

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning hits differently when you realize it’s the closing chapter of a saga you’ve loved for years. This isn’t just another action movie ending — it’s the heartfelt farewell to Ethan Hunt, one of the most iconic heroes we’ve ever had the pleasure to root for.

Spoiler Alert Incoming!

Like Ethan Hunt, you can’t unknow what you’ve seen — or read. This article dives deep into Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning and contains major spoilers. Read ahead only if you're ready to disarm the plot twists!

Tom Cruise, who has bled, broken, and thrown himself off things for our entertainment since 1996, delivers a performance so raw and real, you feel it in your chest.

Is it a worthy finale? "In a blink of an eye"—yes. But that blink holds multitudes. Stakes. Loss. Legacy. The final mission is bigger, riskier, and more emotional than anything the IMF has ever taken on. And through it all, we watch Ethan Hunt shoulder the weight of a world slowly unraveling—one sprint, one skydive, one heartbreak at a time.

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The stakes have never been this high (or this personal)

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning begins right where Dead Reckoning Part One left us: a rogue artificial intelligence known only as the Entity is gaining power, infiltrating global systems, rewriting truths, and controlling outcomes. It’s no longer about stopping a villain—it’s about surviving the very concept of control being ripped from human hands.

And this time, the emotional costs hit instantly. In a haunting opening sequence, Gabriel—played with icy menace by Esai Morales—ambushes a hospital to kill Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames), Ethan’s lifelong friend and the heart of the team. He dies protecting the “Poison Pill,” the only known tool to disable the Entity. It’s brutal, it’s quiet, and it sets a devastating tone.

What follows is a globe-trotting chase to stop a sentient force that knows your every move before you do. Ethan is more than just the team’s leader—he’s the only one who seems willing to sacrifice everything, again and again, for the greater good. But as the film shows us, even legends run out of time.

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Let’s talk action: The stuntwork that defies Gravity (and my sanity)

We’ve come to expect Tom Cruise to flirt with death on camera—and this film still shocks. But what makes The Final Reckoning different isn’t just the scale of the action. It’s the way each moment feels earned, built on years of escalating stakes and emotional trust.

Forget green screens. The action here is practical, precise, and pure cinema. There’s the now-iconic biplane sequence, where Ethan boards Gabriel’s plane mid-air and they battle across its wings. It’s brutal. Dizzying. Completely unhinged. Cruise actually did this. No stunt double. Just him, a real plane, and a prayer.

But it’s not just one showstopper. Every major set piece is detailed, inventive, and woven into the plot with emotional weight:

• In the London escape, Ethan outsmarts the CIA with sleight-of-hand, gadgetry, and his bare fists.
• On St. Matthew Island, a snowy showdown erupts between IMF operatives and Russian commandos—gunfire echoing through the icy wind.
• Then comes the submarine dive, where Ethan swims into the wreck of the Sevastopol, fighting time, collapsing metal, and drowning darkness to retrieve the Entity’s core. You feel every second of his lungs running out of air.

But the standout? The South African bunker assault. A nuclear bomb ticking down, tension thick enough to cut with a knife. CIA betrayal complicates everything, forcing alliances to shift on the fly. And then there’s Ethan—literally fighting for his life in the skies above.

The climactic biplane stunt is nothing short of jaw-dropping: Tom Cruise boards the enemy’s plane mid-flight, hanging on for dear life as the two adversaries battle on the wings, buffeted by wind and altitude that turn every move into a death-defying gamble. The raw physicality of this sequence, with no CGI safety net, is a breathtaking reminder of why Cruise is the ultimate action icon.

Meanwhile, Grace is below, saving lives and defying odds, keeping the mission alive on the ground amid the chaos. It’s a perfect collision of sky-high thrills and ground-level stakes—pure Mission: Impossible adrenaline.

There’s sweat behind every frame. You can feel the cold, hear the silence before an explosion, and taste the panic. It’s not just spectacle—it’s sensory overload, and it’s brilliant.

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“In a blink of an eye”

There’s a moment late in the film—quiet, desperate, pivotal. Grace (Hayley Atwell, luminous and layered) must pull a 5D optical device from a data vault, timed to a 100-millisecond window. That’s all. One blink. One slip, and the Entity wins.

It’s Ethan’s final gamble, and it’s Grace’s ultimate test.

That line—“in a blink of an eye”—echoes through Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning. It’s not just about reflexes. It’s about how fast trust must be built. How quickly life changes. How love, sacrifice, and duty happen all at once and are gone the next second.

It’s the soul of the finale. And yes, I cried.

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The cast of Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning? A team worth dying for!

Every returning face brings emotional weight. Simon Pegg’s Benji is the team’s heart and tech wizard—he delivers both humor and raw panic when everything falls apart. Hayley Atwell’s Grace goes from thief to IMF agent in a performance that’s sincere, smart, and strong.

But it’s Tom Cruise who carries the weight. There’s something more vulnerable about him here. Not weaker—just more human. His eyes betray exhaustion, guilt, and a longing to save everyone, even when he knows he can’t. It’s not Ethan Hunt trying to be a hero. It’s Ethan Hunt realizing he already is one, and it still might not be enough.

And with Luther gone, the team feels like a family in mourning, yet still standing tall. Which is, frankly, the entire vibe of Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning.

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Christopher McQuarrie, thank you for the Chaos (and the closure)

Let’s give the man his flowers. Director and co-writer Christopher McQuarrie has directed the last four Mission: Impossible films, and in Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, he reaches a zenith. No moment feels wasted. No character is flat. No explosion is without purpose.

He balances high-octane madness with quiet heartbreak. The camera glides through combat-like choreography. The bunker scene, with its multiple perspectives, is a masterclass in timing and tension. Even the pacing—two hours and forty minutes—flies by.

This isn’t just an action movie. It’s a film about what it means to resist control, to fight for humanity when humanity feels lost. And McQuarrie wraps it in a final act that stuns, sobs, and soars.

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So… is Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning really the end?

The title says Final Reckoning. But the door is left ajar. Cruise hasn’t officially said goodbye. Neither has McQuarrie. And the ending—bittersweet, yes—still feels like a “to be continued” just out of reach.

But if this is the last chapter, I’ll accept it. Because it honors the legacy. It gives Ethan Hunt the goodbye he earned—with sweat, scars, and unstoppable faith in doing the right thing.

The mission may be over, but the impact? Permanent.

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Final words: This wasn’t just a movie. It was a goodbye hug.

I’ve watched these films on repeat. I’ve watched Tom Cruise grow older but never slower. I’ve laughed with Benji, worried for Luther, admired Ilsa, and rooted for Grace. And now it’s all wrapped in a finale that doesn’t just give you closure—it leaves you breathless.

Not because of explosions, but because of love. This franchise was built on it. For craft. For characters. For cinema.

And in Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, it shows.

29 years. One legacy. Endless stunts.

Tom Cruise doing what Tom Cruise does best. What an era. What a send-off.

“In a blink of an eye”—it ends. But some goodbyes stay with you forever.