Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning Review: Cruise Lands the Plane, Slowly

Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning is a great finale attached to a long wind-up. Christopher McQuarrie's 2025 film closes Tom Cruise's run as Ethan Hunt across eight outings, with the IMF chasing the rogue AI called the Entity while a figure from Hunt's past closes in. Rotten Tomatoes has it Certified Fresh at 80% with an 89% verified audience score, and IMDb users rate it 7.1/10 from 238,000 votes, checked October 24, 2026. The stunts are real, the send-off works, and the two hours before the third act test your patience. Cruise reportedly finishes here, and he goes out with the best skydive ever filmed.

Spoiler-free verdict: Watch it, but know the first half is a recital. The underwater and biplane sequences are among the series' best, the emotional landing sticks, and a 170-minute runtime is the real antagonist. Recommended for the finale and the craft.

What The Final Reckoning is about

Picking up from Dead Reckoning, the Entity has buried itself in global intelligence networks, and the world's governments are closing ranks in ways that leave Hunt's team outside the law. Esai Morales' Gabriel, the ghost from Hunt's past, works the same crisis from the other side. The mission structure runs the franchise playbook: assemble the team (Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Henry Czerny, Pom Klementieff), break the plan, improvise the finale. McQuarrie, directing his fourth entry in the series, gives the film the longest runtime of any Mission: Impossible at 2 hours 49 minutes.

The film opened May 23, 2025, and while it underperformed franchise expectations worldwide, it passed $213 million domestically, overtaking The Mummy in Cruise's career ledger.

Cast and performances

Cruise is 63 here and still the most committed action lead working: the biplane sequence, the dive, and the endurance of the performance itself are the argument for his whole career. The recurring team gets its best material in years; Rhames and Pegg carry the series' history in their faces, and Atwell's Grace has grown from pickpocket into a genuine partner. Morales makes Gabriel less a villain than a thesis: what Hunt was before he found a conscience. The ensemble's warmth is what the first half keeps withholding, and what the finale spends.

What works

The set pieces, plainly. The underwater sequence and the biplane scene are engineered with the clarity McQuarrie has refined across four films, and IMDb's own user-review summary credits exactly that: standout underwater and biplane sequences, with Cruise's refusal to fake the stunts the draw. The finale delivers the emotional payoff the franchise promised, and one featured IMDb review captured the shape most viewers agree on: "Final Reckoning lands a jaw-dropping finale, the first half is too bogged down to call this a great send-off. A fitting end to an epic run, just not the ending it deserved."

What doesn't

Exposition, length, and a first act that reviews across the board describe as overloaded. The same IMDb review consensus flags excessive exposition, pacing issues, and weak character development as the recurring complaints, and Rotten Tomatoes critics scored it 80%, a comfortable step below the 97% that Mission: Impossible - Fallout carried. The Entity plotting asks for technobabble patience the series never needed before, and at 170 minutes the film recaps its own mythology more than its characters can absorb. It is the one Cruise blockbuster that would win from a cut.

What audiences say

The audience score outpaces the critics: 89% verified hot on RT against 80% from critics, and IMDb's 7.1/10 from 238,000 votes runs a little below Dead Reckoning's 7.6, checked October 24, 2026. The user reviews split exactly like the critics: the stunts and ending praised without reservation, the pacing faulted without much argument against it. TMDB has it at 7.2 from 3,267 votes. For a final outing marketed on finality, the audience verdict is generous: people wanted to love it, and mostly did.

Where to watch Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning

In the US, it streams on Amazon Prime Video, Paramount Plus Premium and Essential, the Paramount+ Amazon Channel, fuboTV, Philo, MGM Plus, and Amazon Prime Video with Ads, with buy and rent on Amazon Video, Apple TV Store, Google Play Movies, YouTube, and Fandango At Home. Checked on October 24, 2026. The full film profile sits at Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning streaming options and member reviews. For Cruise doing the same thing in the air with better reviews, see Top Gun: Maverick, and for the grounded spy register this series never occupies, The Bourne Identity.

Verdict

Is The Final Reckoning worth watching? Yes, as a farewell. The craft is at the series ceiling, the finale closes the loop on Cruise's Ethan Hunt with real feeling, and the audience score says the public got the goodbye it wanted. Just budget the first half as setup, because that is what it is: a long walk to the best ending the franchise has staged.

Rating: 7.4/10 (IMDb 7.1/10, Rotten Tomatoes 80% critics and 89% audience, TMDB 7.2/10; evidence-weighted, checked October 24, 2026)