Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning runs nearly three hours, and I didn’t notice. That’s the first thing I’ve got to tell you, because the stakes in this movie are so high that it barely has a chance to breathe with everything it’s trying to do at once, and it still kept me engaged the whole way through.

This is a non-spoiler review, so you’re safe if you haven’t seen it yet. Mrs. Know-It-All and I recorded a full spoiler review, and that’s where everything spoilery lives. Here I just want to tell you what you’ve got to look forward to, and whether you should be going to the movies to see it at all.

To say Ethan Hunt faces his ultimate test in this globe-trotting romp would be underselling it. After years of cliffhangers, parachute jumps and face-swapping betrayals, the last mission had a lot to measure up to.

You Don’t Need to Rewatch Anything

The movie picks up, relatively speaking, right where Dead Reckoning Part One left off. Or just Dead Reckoning, because remember, this was originally supposed to be the sequel, but whatever.

You don’t really need to rewatch the last one to follow along. They explain everything to you as you go. The CIA black vault break-in. The Kremlin bombing. They show you so many scenes from the past, and whether or not it was always the intention, they’re definitely trying to sell us on the idea that this whole thing was telling one unified story, with an endgame that was taking us here all along. I’ll get into a lot of that in the spoiler review.

What it does for this movie is give years of character arcs a purpose, which I think is really cool. It cares more about paying those off than about topping the last stunt. And as big as it is, the stakes are very personal. The planetary ones are there, sure, but the personal ones are the shift that makes all the difference in how you digest this.

The only real time framing we get is the line you’ve seen in the trailer, about him gassing a security briefing, and that was two months ago. So Ethan has been on the run for two months since the previous movie. That’s the only setup you’re given for where this lives in time.

Stunts That Belong to the Story

Christopher McQuarrie is here for this. He dials up grounded tension over bombastic explosions, and it’s so grounded that even the stuff we’d normally be oohing and aahing about just pulls you in.

The practical effects still shine. More than once you’re going to see something that defies logic, reason, anything resembling sense, and your immediate go-to is, oh well, obviously Tom Cruise did that. I found myself doing that again and again. Every time something crazy came up I was like, oh, he’s clearly doing this. It’s funny, the Oscars have now introduced a brand new stunt category, and I have the feeling Tom Cruise is setting himself up for it. Which sort of sucks, because all the other professional stunt people who’ve been doing this forever probably won’t get an opportunity this first go-around. But whatever.

All of it makes sense, though. Last movie, the motorcycle going off the cliff felt spectacle motivated. We’ve got to do something big, Tom’s been crazy, let’s do this. Nothing in this one is stunts for stunts’ sake. It’s so tight, and so much a part of the storytelling, that the story is what’s driving it.

Mrs. Know-It-All pointed it out as soon as we left. She said something along the lines of, there are no car chases in this one. And I was like, yeah, no, everything was much bigger than that. And it is. It’s all the stuff you’ve seen in the trailer, so I’m not telling you anything you haven’t seen. Each of these movies has lived in its own space when it comes to the effects and the stunts, and this one marks its own place too.

You’re still going to get your adrenaline fix, don’t worry. All that mayhem feels earned. There are some really stealth-heavy sequences too. In past installments they’re at this dinner party, they’re at this other place, they’re doing whatever, and you kind of get lost in that shuffle. This has some of that, but you don’t get lost in it.

The Team, and the Villain Problem

You get all the Mission: Impossible things in this, including an aged Tom Cruise. He’s not aging well, if that makes sense, but the guy’s still handling himself. He delivers a more introspective Ethan this time, and he’s still running full tilt at every opportunity. That trailer that shows him running constantly? They basically took all of the main running scenes and bridged them together. It’s literally all those scenes.

Hayley Atwell is back as Grace, and she’s really good. I like her a lot. Her chemistry with Tom Cruise has deepened from Part One. In those two months her character has clearly done whatever agents do to become useful to the likes of Kittridge and them, and she’s definitely one of them now. It’s fun.

Simon Pegg and Ving Rhames are both back. There was an original draft of my thoughts on this where I wrote that Simon Pegg’s doing a lot of comedy. Simon Pegg doesn’t do any comedy. When I wrote it I was like, boy, you’re on autopilot. All his Benji-isms are there, but the character has morphed and evolved in the best possible way. Same thing with Ving Rhames. His character is very much part of the setup of all of this, and he plays an integral part in the overall narrative in a way I found very emotionally satisfying, if you get what I mean.

Esai Morales plays the villain, and I didn’t mind him in the last one. They gave him enough menace and mystique there. He felt redundant in this. You never get your normal mustache-twirling villain like you have in other installments, and you know why from the previous movie. You’re dealing with an AI of some sort, and the endgame of that whole scenario is playing out. But you still need someone for Ethan to punch and chase down, and that ends up being Morales’s character. He’s given purpose for the most part, but it doesn’t make him that much more compelling, to be honest.

Saving Your Soul

The world’s at risk, sure. It always is in these. What this one cares about is saving your soul, and that’s not me being dramatic, I swear. The movie leans into trust and legacy, and there’s definitely some sacrifice in there. Some of those can feel like commonplace setups, but there are stakes on them, and it felt so earnest in this one.

There are a lot of fans who are probably going to miss the nonstop momentum of the earlier entries. There’s a ton of that here, but there’s a lot of character-driven stuff too. They have to set a whole bunch of things up, and every time they do, they usually add clips from the previous movies. It helps, and you sort of need it if it’s been a while since you’ve watched them all. I know one thing: this movie made me want to go back and watch the whole franchise straight through, and build the momentum up that way.

Gorgeous, and Quiet When It Counts

This thing is shot gorgeously. There’s a really nice mountain sequence that you could hang in a gallery. You’ll know what I’m talking about when you see it.

The score builds tension without overpowering the drama, which I think is good. It all hearkens back to those original notes, and they do a really good job of incorporating the original Mission: Impossible music. I’m going past the Danny Elfman stuff here, all the way back to the original original, the series. That musical cue has been carried forward through all of this, and I think that’s wonderful. It gives the soundtrack character.

The sound design deserves a special nod. There are a lot of great quiet moments, and it’s hard to hit silence. It’s the equivalent of the white space in comic books. Silence matters, and this does a really good job with it.

Where It Stumbles

The very beginning is exposition heavy, because it has to set everything up. Once you get past that, when the moments arrive, they arrive, and you’re in the action of it all and it’s a lot of fun.

Not every returning character gets the sendoff you might hope for. I’ll put it like that. But everyone gets a moment, and I appreciate that a lot. You also find out some interesting backstories for characters you never anticipated would have one, or who aren’t the characters you think they are. And fans of the series are going to wish for a more traditional final boss.

The Verdict

Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning is a 10 out of 10 on the Know-It-All Index.

It had its drawbacks, yes. I also had a really good time. Whether it’s the best of the franchise, I don’t know. I think your mileage is going to vary. But I had much more fun with this than I did with the last one, and I thought really highly of the last one. So for me, this is easily a 10.

It has strong performances. It’s got focused storytelling. It’s got an elegant direction over spectacle, which I really liked. There are some small pacing lulls and a few character arcs that get left hanging (dangling participles, if you will), but it’s still thrilling and thoughtful overall.

It’s worth seeing on the biggest screen possible. That’s only going to benefit you, trust me. We saw it in AMC Laser, which was the only one that had a seat available, and it was really good. I enjoyed it thoroughly in a movie theater, and I’m okay with every minute of those nearly three hours.

Your turn. What do you want most from a franchise finale: closure, chaos, or character? And if you’ve seen the movie, tell me what you thought. The conversation lives in the comments on the video above.