Tom Cruise in “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckonin
Early reviews for Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning are out. Do critics feel like Cruise has adequately completed his final mission?
The Mission: Impossible franchise kicked off in 1996 with Tom Cruise in the starring role of Impossible Mission Force Agent Ethan Hunt. Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning marks the eighth film in the series, following the release of 2023’s Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning.
The world premiere for Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning was held at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival in the South of France on Wednesday. Since the film screened for critics earlier this week, the reviews for the film so far are either from critics stateside or from journalists who screened the film in Cannes.
The official logline for the new film reads, “Our lives are the sum of our choices. Tom Cruise is Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning.”
Directed by Christopher McQuarrie, the film is a continuation of the plot of 2023’s Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, where Ethan and his fellow IMF members are racing against the clock to shut down the self-aware artificial intelligence program called The Entity from destroying the world.
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning also stars Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Esai Morales, Angela Bassett, Pom Klementieff, Henry Czerny, Holt McCallany, Greg Tarzan Davis, Shea Whigham, Nick Offerman and Hannah Waddingham.
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning to date has received an 89% “fresh” score from Rotten Tomatoes critics based on 87 reviews.
The RT Critics Consensus reads, “Gargantuan in action, runtime, and scope, The Final Reckoning is a sentimental sendoff for Ethan Hunt that accomplishes its mission with a characteristic flair for the impossible.”
Since the film will not be released in theaters until May 23, the RT Popcornmeter rating based on verified user ratings has not yet been posted.
What Are Individual Critics Saying About ‘Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning’?
While many of the top critics on RT point out the impossibilities of what plays out on screen, they are still lauding Tom Cruise’s last Mission: Impossible movie for its entertainment value.
Among those who give Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning a “fresh” rating is Manohla Dargis of The New York Times, who writes, “Final Reckoning is flat-out ridiculous, but it’s a model example of blockbuster entertainment at its most highly polished, and I enjoyed it thoroughly, despite its clichés, extravagant violence and gung-ho militarism.”
Robbie Collin of the Daily Telegraph (UK) also gives The Final Reckoning a “fresh” review on RT, writing, Even by the series’ own now well-established standards, this widely presumed last entry in Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible franchise is an awe-inspiringly bananas piece of work.”
Variety’s Owen Gleiberman also gives the film a “fresh” review while pointing out outlandish tendencies at the same time. Gleiberman’s summary on RT reads, “The film is good enough to remind you how much fun it is when something is truly at stake in a high-flying, twisty-plotted, solemnly preposterous popcorn movie.”
Among the top critics on RT who give The Final Reckoning a “rotten” review is David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter, who writes, “If it’s going to be the last we see of one of the most consistently entertaining franchises to come out of Hollywood in the past few decades, it’s a disappointing farewell with a handful of high points courtesy of the indefatigable lead actor.”
Also assigning the film a “rotten” rating is the BBC’s Nicholas Barber, who writes on RT, “Maybe it’s for the best that The Final Reckoning is being marketed as Mission: Impossible’s grand finale. It’s just a shame that the series’ farewell had to be so solemn — and so silly.”
In his “rotten” review of The Final Reckoning for The Wall Street Journal, Kyle Smith writes on RT, “A penchant for grandiosity over coherence defines M:I 8. Mr. Cruise should remember that his films work best when he’s more of a maverick than a messiah.”
Rated PG-13, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning opens in theaters everywhere on May 23.
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