Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning (2025) review

The eighth - and last - Mission: Impossible entry starring Tom Cruise continues right where Dead Reckoning Part One ended: IMF superspy Ethan Hunt - along with his team consisting of hacker Luther (Ving Rhames), technician Benji (Simon Pegg), pickpocket Grace (Hayley Atwell), hitwoman Paris (Pom Klementieff) and intelligence officer Theo (Greg Tarzan Davis) - has to deactivate the malevolent AI program known as "Entity," and to do so must recover a device called the "Podkova" (which looks like a hard drive) and finally eliminate Gabriel (Esai Morales), Entity's protector.  With star-producer Cruise turning 63 years old this past July, it's understandable they'd want to go out in grand style and try to "wrap" all of the movies up, but the constant rapid cutting and flashbacks that fill out the first hour slow things up considerably, and the story itself, with an invisible creation as the Final Boss, is a little too abstract for non-tech geeks to truly "grasp."  The large action sequences are worth sticking around for though, with Hunt diving through the sunken Sevastopol submarine (and rightfully concerned with decompression sickness) and the battle of the dueling biplanes being thrilling and well-directed.  But I'll say here what I said about Johnny Knoxville, Steve O and the rest of those hooligans in Jackass Forever: maybe it's time for Tom to stop risking his physical well-being and let one of the younger dudes (Miles Teller, perhaps?) launch themselves off of skyscrapers.