Review: Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is a sprawling, frenetic, and sometimes self-serious entry that leans hard into topical anxiety about artificial intelligence while doubling down on Ethan Hunt’s messianic burden to save the world—again. It’s a film that wants to be both a blockbuster thrill ride and a meditation on destiny, sacrifice, and human agency in an increasingly digitized age. The result is uneven but often gripping, and unmistakably marked by the weight of its hero’s Christ complex.
The central antagonist is not a man but a machine. Known as “The Entity,” it’s an AI system gone rogue, embedded in every digital network and capable of manipulating data, controlling systems, and warping reality. Its threat isn’t destruction in the traditional cinematic sense—it doesn’t drop bombs or shoot lasers. It erases truth, rewrites identities, and recodes global order from within. This is where the film finds its most interesting terrain: not in its elaborate stunts, but in its paranoia about a world where facts are no longer fixed and trust is impossible.
Director Christopher McQuarrie taps into present-day fears of AI as an uncontrollable force that transcends human comprehension. There’s no face to punch, no lair to storm—only a sense that everything can be hacked, and no one is safe. In this world, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) isn’t just trying to prevent disaster. He’s fighting to preserve the very idea that human will still matters. That’s a heavy load, and the film makes sure we see him carry it, literally and symbolically.
Ethan Hunt has always been an outsized figure—part spy, part daredevil, part martyr. But The Final Reckoning frames him in more explicitly spiritual terms. The narrative repeatedly positions him as the lone believer in a godless world, refusing to sacrifice the one for the many, insisting on saving both. His choices are rarely strategic; they’re moral imperatives. He doesn’t optimise risk; he absorbs it. When others see collateral damage as necessary, Hunt sees it as damnation.
This approach sets him apart from the other characters, who increasingly question the logic of his methods. Even his allies—Benji (Simon Pegg), Luther (Ving Rhames), and Grace (Hayley Atwell)—seem wearied by his righteousness. Hunt refuses to kill unless he must. He doesn’t delegate death. And he doesn’t let go of those in his care, no matter the cost. These aren’t just character traits—they’re articles of faith. Hunt is a man who believes that saving one life affirms the value of every life.
It’s not subtle. Hunt is constantly shown standing apart, framed like an icon, lit from above, wounded but not broken. His pursuit of “the key” that can control or destroy the AI becomes more than a mission—it’s a cross he bears. He’s not just trying to win; he’s trying to redeem. Even when others see the battle as unwinnable, Hunt insists on finding “another way.” The film invites comparison not to other spies but to figures like Neo, John Connor, and ultimately Christ himself—lonely, sacrificial, doomed to save what won’t save itself.
Cruise leans into this reading with full conviction. There’s no wink, no irony. His performance is deadly serious, at times almost joyless. The thrill-seeking persona that once defined the franchise is still present in the action set-pieces—particularly a jaw-dropping train sequence—but it’s now yoked to something heavier. Cruise plays Hunt like a man whose stunts are acts of penance, not spectacle.
The downside is that this messianic framing can flatten the character. Hunt’s refusal to compromise is admirable but increasingly predictable. He’s less a man than a symbol. The human cost—his inability to build a real life, form lasting attachments, trust others with the burden—remains largely unexplored. The film wants him to be a martyr, but never examines the loneliness or arrogance that can come with that role.
What The Final Reckoning does explore, often effectively, is the loss of control in a world run by invisible algorithms. It’s telling that the government agencies in the film are mostly powerless, reacting blindly to events orchestrated by a machine they can’t trace or understand. The idea of sovereignty—personal, national, moral—has been swallowed by code. Hunt isn’t just saving the world; he’s trying to preserve the idea that the world can be saved by people.
Visually, the film is polished and kinetic, with McQuarrie favouring clarity over chaos in the action sequences. The editing keeps the pace urgent without losing coherence, and Lorne Balfe’s score underlines the tension with ominous weight. But the story is dense, and at times the exposition threatens to overwhelm the plot. The AI’s capabilities are both amorphous and all-encompassing—conveniently powerful when needed, conveniently fallible when the story requires. It’s less a character than a force of nature.
Yet that may be the point. The AI can’t be reasoned with or reprogrammed; it must be confronted in faith. Hunt’s war isn’t technological—it’s theological. He believes in good and evil, in choice, in sacrifice. He doesn’t just fight the machine; he refuses its logic. That defiance, more than any stunt, is the real mission.
The Final Reckoning may not be the best film in the franchise, but it leaves Ethan Hunt not as a victorious spy, but as a man still choosing to believe in a world worth saving—whether or not that world believes in him.
