‘Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning’ Review: In Cruise We Trust?

Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning is best understood as a quasi-religious text. The Final Reckoning is the eighth entry in a long-running series that has undergone many creative changes since the Brian De Palma original in 1996. In the latest installment, directed by Tom Cruise muse Christopher McQuarrie (and written by McQuarrie and Erik Jendresen), series constant Ethan Hunt (Cruise) gets a forced apotheosis.

In Dead Reckoning, to which The Final Reckoning is a direct sequel, the excessive focus to the point of near-worship of Cruise’s Hunt was already evident. “In Cruise we must trust,” I wrote of that movie’s approach to the character. Dead Reckoning set Hunt and his team against an artificial intelligence called “the Entity” and its human agents, who sought domination by following its calculations and predictions. They were a direct contrast to the improvisational, spontaneous, and Hunt-centric method of Hunt’s team in the IMF, the off-the-books spy agency that has been central to the series.

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Jack Butler

Jack Butler is a former submissions editor at National Review.

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Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning is best understood as a quasi-religious text. The Final Reckoning is the eighth entry in a long-running series that has undergone many creative changes since the Brian De Palma original in 1996. In the latest installment, directed by Tom Cruise muse Christopher McQuarrie (and written by McQuarrie and Erik Jendresen), series constant Ethan Hunt (Cruise) gets a forced apotheosis.

In Dead Reckoning, to which The Final Reckoning is a direct sequel, the excessive focus to the point of near-worship of Cruise’s Hunt was already evident. “In Cruise we must trust,” I wrote of that movie’s approach to the character. Dead Reckoning set Hunt and his team against an artificial intelligence called “the Entity” and its human agents, who sought domination by following its calculations and predictions. They were a direct contrast to the improvisational, spontaneous, and Hunt-centric method of Hunt’s team in the IMF, the off-the-books spy agency that has been central to the series.