The 62-year-old actor takes the physicality of the action movie to previously unattained heights and remains cinema’s biggest box office draw for it
May 23, 2025 18:38
When producers suggested the idea of the first Top Gun film to studio executives, the pitch famously included a poster showing Tom Cruise standing in front of a fighter jet. Nothing else. It was immediately green lit. Thirty years later the poster for Cruise’s apparently final Mission Impossible actioner – which with the subtitle The Final Reckoning revels in the sense of climax for all that has gone before in the franchise – is a photo of Tom Cruise. Nothing else, apart from a few cuts and bruises.
This alone says a lot about the 62-year-old’s ability to maintain his status as cinema’s greatest box office draw. That he does his own stunts in director Christopher McQuarrie’s pulse-pounder sounds a bit meh when said in a press release or mentioned in casual conversation. But the clinging onto the wings of bi-planes as they loop, dive and twist through a ravine, and then plunging into the bowels of a sunk Russian sub while dodging falling torpedoes, triggered in this viewer the reflex to clench fists and hold breath until the scenes were over.
If there is a legacy to Cruise, who one forgets is a fine actor in films that have room to showcase that particular skill, it is that he has taken the physicality of the action movie to previously unattained heights. The cockpit scenes in the second Top Gun movie were testament to this. But in this Mission Impossible they are taken to the next level. Best to watch them in IMAX as intended to get the full roller coaster rush.
All this wouldn’t count for much if the screenplay to Cruise’s reportedly final Mission Impossible didn’t have a plot that worked. But it does. Hunt’s mission, should he choose to accept it (which he does), is to prevent an AI enemy known as The Entity from sowing discord with fake news and hacking the world’s nuclear arsenals in order to destroy humanity. As usual, he is aided by tech-bro Benji (Simon Pegg) whose comic timidity is finally revealed to cover fathom-deep reservoirs of bravery. Also on side again is Hayley Atwell’s peerless pickpocket Grace, who luckily has the close combat skills of a special forces assassin.
This neatly dodges the always tricky convention of casting a real country as the enemy of an all-American hero. I give you Marty in the first Back to the Future who cried “Libyans!”. What, all of them?
The Entity is a criminal mastermind all of humanity can oppose, except those of course whom it has recruited online. No spoiler here about how things turn out. But tantalisingly matters resolve in way that leaves open the possibility of a ninth Mission Impossible, with or without the incomparable Tom Cruise.
Mission Impossible – the Final Reckoning
Classification: 12A
★★★★★