The James Bond series has never appealed to us, we always found it a silly male ego fantasy of a shooty exciting spy-based lifestyle with sultry babes everywhere.

Matt Damon’s Bourne Identity series and Tom Cruises’ Mission Impossible franchises are more our thing.

And this time it’s Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning that’s caught our interest. It’s just launched in cinemas, is the big film of the moment, and it’s actually damn good action fun to boot. Hurray!

Embrace the Stunts in Mission Impossible – The Final Reckoning

Directed and written by Christopher McQuarrie, this is the latest in the hugely popular Mission Impossible series. This Tom Cruise vehicle has been around since 1996 and this is the eight in the franchise.

They’ve got better and better over the years, really finding their feet in 2015 onward, with the brilliant and bonkers Fallout (2018) arguably being the best of the lot. That was the one with Henry Cavill in it.

Final Reckoning is kind of dubbed as the “last” in the Tom Cruise series, with the actor now 62. But we’d be very surprised if that’s it and he doesn’t do another one. He’s on fine form here and does some of the most insanely challenging stunts of his career.

As that what the action spy films are all about.

The plot in The Final Reckoning is an absurd, convoluted mess that makes little sense. The flamboyance of that kind of adds to the OTT fun, really, as nothing going on is truly plausible. The self-awareness of the film adds to its charm, whereas James Bond has a habit of taking itself far too seriously.

Anyway, for what it’s worth, the plot can be summarised thus:

• A devious AI thing called the Entity is hellbent on seizing control of the Earth’s nuclear weapon stockpile
• Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his skilled Impossible Missions Force team must stop it at all costs

Hunt must compile an expert team, which includes expert thief Grace (Hayley Atwell), IMF technician Benhi Dunn (Simon Pegg), and various others.

The Entity (which is a term kind of overused in the film) leads to Hunt taking on some of the most berserk things he’s ever done. The Final Reckoning’s big set piece, a brief segment of which you can see below, is just astonishing.

It’s worth seeing the film just for this—the opening segment being below.

That’s just the set up, of course, but cripes almighty does the rest of what follows gets mightily intense. It’s likely to go down as one of the all-time great movie set pieces.

Later in the film Cruise is left dangling off an aeroplane in spectacular fashion.

Whilst watching it we were convinced this must have been CGI. But, nope, Cruise did it all whilst strapped in to the craft flying upside down etc.

All the action set pieces are stunning, topped by the submarine stuff, which is why you go to see a film like this.

Where the film is let down slightly is with the exposition, which is unnecessarily convoluted. At three hours, a lot of that time is spent with an internal infighting US government department. These bits can get pretty tedious, but to be fair it does lead to a solid emotional pay off at the end of the film.

Absolutely see it in your cinema, that’s what Mission Impossible – The Final Reckoning was made for. A few issues aside, it’s damn good action entertainment. Nothing else to add!

The Production of Mission Impossible – The Final Reckoning

Tom Cruise is divisive with movie fans (and general public), with his beliefs regarding Scientology often painting him in a negative light (although other religions get away scot-free from such instant negativity). However, we suggest you watch the above interview with Cruise in May 2025 at London’s BFI.

His enthusiasm for the arts and movies appears very genuine and he’s quite happy to self-deprecate. He’s as much a student of film production as he is a movie star.

We can’t help be impressed, to be honest, as whatever you think of him he’s made a heck of a lot of great films over the last 40 years (a favourite of ours is his introspective take as Nathan Algren in The Last Samurai from 2003).

The two most recent Mission Impossible films were in quick succession, with the latest Top Gun film shot around those, making for one very busy period. This being post-COVID and the damage done to the film industry during its downtime, Cruise was determined to try and bolster interest in movies again.

At one point, an angry shouting match he had was picked up on by the media and published in the news.

Director Christopher McQuarrie responded very clearly and patiently about that, highlighting how the media can often distort on set events. Again, a calm and collected take we can appreciate.

Away from that side, the film’s budget was between $300 and $400 million. So far it has recouped over $500 million at the box office after two weeks.

Critics love the film, too, with all manner of glowing praise worldwide.

To be clear, it is a ridiculous and OTT action romp. But again, one that is self-aware. Its spectacular nature is excellent escapism and we hope its success spurs Mr. Cruise on to do another outing. As this is one of the most consistently entertaining Hollywood franchises.