MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - THE FINAL RECKONING

Part 2 of 2023's DEAD RECKONING PART ONE finds Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) still on Gabriel's (Esai Morales) trail in search of The Entity. Ethan must go it alone now without the assistance of the team as he's put through brutal feats of physicality in order to save the world from total annihilation. At 62-years-of-age, Cruise shows no signs of slowing down. The man is absolutely incredible, still doing his own stunt work where the airplane sequence alone is unlike anything I've ever seen captured on film. Mesmerizing and kept my jaw on the floor. However, overall, the pacing of this film is slower than part one's but even with its runtime of almost 3 hours, it never drags. And while I preferred part one as a whole over this, it's still a fitting and touching conclusion to the franchise (and I still wish they would have kept the original name: MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - DEAD RECKONING PART TWO). This was one of the rare franchises IMO that got better as it progressed (usually the opposite is true) but these films continued to outdo themselves and I'm actually rather sad we won't see Cruise and the team back for another installment. A lot of credit is due to writer and director Christopher McQuarrie and the team as he was able to continue breathing new life into the franchise over the course of the last 4 films. Especially considering the final story told over the course of these last 2 films runs for about 5 1/2 hours total and never gets stale, nor does fatigue ever set in like it did for me on JOHN WICK: CHAPTER FOUR which had a similar run time to these. Bravo! 7/10