Tom Cruise is putting everything on the line in Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning for the farewell of his character Ethan Hunt. The eighth, and possibly last, Mission Impossible film is also bursting with stunts. Reviewers see the structure falter, but praise the action scenes.
AD – 4 Stars
“Cruise – now 62 – once again shows why he is the uncrowned king of the action film. He performs breakneck stunts between the wings of an airplane – that is racing around at high altitude – and then casually goes to fight there. It is not only spectacular, but sometimes downright insane.”
“Yet not everything is a hit. The duration of almost three hours is considerable – your bladder will be put to the test. In addition, there is far too much explanation. The first ten minutes alone consist of a large flashback and explanation of what has happened since the previous film. A shame. Fans want action, not chatter.”
The Guardian – 5 Stars
“It’s sometimes nicely crazy and totally over the top, but above all very fun to watch. You also get to see flashbacks with highlights from the previous seven films. And of course there is another scene where Tom runs at full speed through a street – such a scene just has to be in every Mission: Impossible. Cruise always stays young, always fit, and never gives up – even when the fate of the whole world is at stake.”
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Watch the Trailer of Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning
De Volkskrant – 4 Stars
“The underwater scenes are fabulously lit: Hunt/Cruise with his lamp-equipped diving helmet, between the spinning torpedoes in the belly of a submarine slowly sliding towards a sea abyss. And gradually, as director McQuarrie interweaves the action at various locations into a simultaneously told apotheosis, in which of course a countdown nuclear bomb is also defused, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning really gets going.”
Het Parool – Gives No Stars
“Whether it will really be the last part always remains to be seen, but Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning does everything in any case to emphasize that this is a farewell. Certainly in, say, the first hour, the film is somewhat hampered by the constant flashbacks to the earlier films and the constant emphasis that this is what everything has led to.”
“As soon as The Final Reckoning leaves the exposition overload of the first half behind and the action erupts, that is exactly what happens. The scenes in which Hunt dives to a sunken submarine, in which he transfers from one plane to another in the air, no computer animation can compete with that. It’s insane, it may no longer be of this time, but this is action that you feel in your fibers and pores.”