“Final Reckoning” has great action, not much else

I have seen all of the "Mission Impossible" movies except the 1996 original in the theater. Regardless of their quality, these movies deserve to be seen on the big screen. Few movies do action like they do. Even now, at the supposed last "Mission" for Cruise, those sequences, particularly the plane sequence, are spectacular.

In "The Final Reckoning! Hunt and his team must race across the globe and stop the AI known as The Entity from ending life on Earth.

I have not been a fan of these last two "Mission Impossible" movies because the overarching plot verges more like science fiction, which is not what these are supposed to be. There is always some suspension of disbelief with these movies, but these take it a bit too far. There is a scene where Ethen gets into this machine, which allows him to communicate with The Entity. On the way home, I realized that these past two movies were putting HAL from "2001: A Space Odyssey" into 9 "Mission Impossible" movies. That takes away from the spy/action movie these are supposed to be.

The action is incredible and Makes up for the story's shortfalls. As I mentioned above, there is an astonishing sequence with two biplanes. Cruise, famous for doing his own stunts, is on the wing of a plane as it is flying. His training for this scene is insane: read up on it. It is a thrilling sequence and is one of the reasons to see this on the big screen. One of the most tense ones involves Hunt going onto a sunken sub to retrieve the key to destroying the Entity. Very few films are doing action like the "Mission" movies. I will always appreciate how they have raised the bar for action scenes.

Tom Cruise has been playing Ethen Hint in the Mission Impossible movies since 1996—almost 30 years. He will be 63 this year, so I hope this truly is "The Final Reckoning!" Then again, I have been convinced for a long time that he wants to die doing a stunt in one of his movies.

6/10

Rated PG-13 for sequences of strong violence and action, bloody images, and some language

2h 49min