Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning (2025)

169 minutes, and the whole first hour is a briefing. Characters explain the Entity to each other, then explain it again, while flashbacks from the older movies pop up like a greatest hits slideshow. It’s a real slog. Then Tom Cruise squeezes into a diving suit and drops into a sunken Russian submarine, and the movie turns into something else: a long, quiet, nerve-shredding sequence where the whole wreck keeps shifting under him. The biplane finale is just as nuts, with Cruise clinging to a wing like air is optional. Hayley Atwell and Simon Pegg get real moments, and Angela Bassett brings weight to a president stuck with impossible choices. Esai Morales’s Gabriel is still a villain without much going on inside. The budget was reported at $300 to $400 million, and it made $598.8 million worldwide. A 6.5 because the stunts are all-timers and the script can’t stop clearing its throat. $583 says you yawn through the first hour and then forget to blink for the last one.

What works: The sunken submarine sequence and the biplane finale are among the best stunt work in the whole series.

What doesn’t: The first hour is clunky exposition and flashback montages, and at 169 minutes the movie badly needed a trim.

Who it’s for: Fans who’ve followed Ethan Hunt for years and will sit through a lot of talk for two all-time set pieces.