DAC Episode 416 - Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning (2025)

what is going on with ethan’s hair in this movie? It’s not the crewcut-adjacent trims of 1,3,5 and 7. it’s not the gorgeous flop of 2,4 and 6. this shaggy deal looks like it’s trying to integrate both sides of the hunthair persona. pick a lane, hunt. a solomon lane.

Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning is unhinged. It insists that it’s a separate entity from Dead Reckoning Part One but spends most of its runtime answering the questions posed in its predecessor. It wants to be a genuine finale to the franchise but leaves the door wide open for more installments. Its prologue is a full 30 minutes’ worth of flashbacks within flashbacks that serve to explain things that are also happening in the prologue? The pacing is an absolute mess, the dialogue is agonizingly self-serious, and the final aerial action sequence is upstaged by an underwater action sequence from earlier in the film.

But here’s the thing: if you watch this with Dead Reckoning (Part One!) fresh in your memory, it’s good. It’s good, actually! I never thought I’d type those words. But here we are. Also, the underwater action sequence with Cruise swimming through an abandoned submarine? One of the greatest things I’ve ever seen in a movie. Seriously.