There’s a special place in my heart for the Mission: Impossible franchise. America’s version of James Bond, it encapsulates everything that a great action franchise should have: a rolling cast of great actors portraying fun characters with some of the most inventive stunt work that the US have to offer. At it’s centre has always been Tom Cruise, a man who seems to want to push himself to the limits that his body can handle, just so he can provide you with a thrilling action set-piece. A true servant of cinema, I am in awe of the things he does in this movie.

I had small issues with the previous film Dead Reckoning, it had a fantastic beginning and end, but the 2nd act left a little to be desired as you try and wrap your head around the AI villain and Gabriel, who had previous significance in Ethan Hunt’s life. However, with The Final Reckoning I did not feel these issues at all. The action set pieces are as thrilling as they’ve ever been in the series and the pacing of the film is good, even with that hefty almost 3 hour runtime. There’s an underwater diving sequence that has almost no dialogue for around 25 minutes of the film, and yet you’re on the edge of your seat wondering how in the hell Hunt is going to pull all of this off. The bi-pedal plane stunts are insane, I physically reacted to the stunts with gasps multiple times simply because I felt there was no way Cruise wouldn’t just die doing this.

The script is as hammy as usual for a M:I film, but it should be what you expect when coming into it. Yes they’re going to over-explain everything where the characters finish each others sentences constantly but honestly it’s so much fun watching them do it that you just din’t mind. The story certainly gets better once it’s freed from the shackles of explaining everything that has happened before, and that 3rd act is just dynamite. It does suffer a little bit from looking back to previous M:I films too much, I would say we had about 10 different times where they cut in a clip of one of the previous films where that scene was important for context to the current scene. It was a little annoying as someone who is familiar to the series but it would probably help someone who wasn’t as familiar.

Visually it’s as strong as ever, Cruise under the ice is fantastic image, and the plane fight is shot perfectly. Also having the planes with such gorgeous a gorgeous red and yellow was fantastic, one of many production design choices that really work. When Cruise and director Christopher McQuarrie came together for Rogue Nation it was obviously a match made in heaven, he is the perfect director for Cruise as he is someone who aligns with his sensibilities and understands that Tom wants to push it as far as he can go. The film is very well directed and I am excited to see what those two can do outside of the series now that it has been completed.

This film did feel like an epilogue at times, tying up some loose ends by bringing some characters back that maybe you didn’t need to see again but it’s fun for them to be here. Everyone is working to the best of their abilities, and even all of the new cast they brought in were great, including Holt McCallany and Tramell Tillman who should both get some large roles because they stole both of the scenes they were in.

I did feel that maybe it doesn’t quite justify its runtime at times, I didn’t care for the president and cabinet cut away scenes as much as I did with the real action, but it was needed to show how tense everything is. The Final Reckoning is probably my third favourite Mission: Impossible after Fallout and Ghost Protocol, and is a fitting ending to a series that strived to one up itself time and time again.