Movies

Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning

As this is one of the last movies in the Tom Cruise is Ethan Hunt Mission Impossible world, they did not hold back. There is a great cast of people and they play very well together.

Garrett

Aug 31, 2025 — 3 min read

Synopsis

Ethan Hunt and his standard band of merry men must hunt down the tool to contain and AI that has gotten lose. However, this means once again going rogue against his own government, as well as every other government, who want to use the AI for their own purposes.

Review

As this is one of the last movies in the Tom Cruise is Ethan Hunt Mission Impossible world, they did not hold back. There is a great cast of people and they play very well together.

While this movie did get filmed during COVID restrictions and lockdown, you can see that there are still a plethora of chemistry building events in the movie that show they were working well together.

The story is good, especially with the GPTs of the world popping up left and right to help you with everything from teaching, writing, and malware creation, the threat and scariness of AI is a perfect big bad. What I don't particularly like about the story is the introduction of Hayley Atwell's character. She did a great job, but Ethan in the previous couple movies has made it clear the Ilsa Foust is his love interest and then Atwell's character blindly stumbles in. Just seems dumb. Foust made sense.

The action and stuns are awesome. To think that Tom Cruise actually did the motorcycle jump is outstanding. I highly recommend you watch this 9 minute video about that one stunt.

EDIT 8/31/2025: I rewatched this on a plane today and honestly, what they did to Ilsa is such a travesty. It is just dirty. She had maybe 5 lines and then dies kind of off screen. I don't mind Grace, but Ilsa was so much better. That really is the kicker for this movie that I am not sure I could say when I wrote it previously. Just that switch is hard to swallow especially when you are watching them all in a row.

My Rating

This movie is solid. Its an 8 that I look forward to rewatching again before the next one comes out. I have enjoyed the newer Mission Impossible films a lot and this one just continues that legacy. Please see my edit for more reasons for this.

Parental Rating

Slight language, decent amount of violence, no gore, and a good story means that my dad is down for this movie. He doesn't like Tom Cruise if I remember correctly, but he would watch this movie. My mom is out. She will reject that as there isn't a lot of family value going on in this movie. Dad will approve.