Title: Mission: Impossible - Final ReckoningDirector: Christopher McQuarrie Cast: Tom Cruise, Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Esai Morales,Where: In theatres near youRating: 3.5 StarsThirty years, eight films, and enough stunt insurance claims to bankrupt a small nation — Mission: Impossible – Final Reckoning arrives not so much as a cinematic event but as a self-canonization of its star-pilot, Tom Cruise. If this is indeed Ethan Hunt’s swan dive, it’s performed not with subtle grace but with jet-fuel bravado, high-altitude histrionics, and just enough dramatic weight to prevent the plane from taking off without its conscience.Let’s get the obvious out of the way: yes, Cruise climbs out onto a biplane mid-flight. Yes, he does it with his usual expression of clenched-jaw sincerity, as though the fate of humanity and summer box office both depend on the firmness of his grip. And yes, it’s real — or at least real enough to make you clutch the armrest and reevaluate your gym membership. If stunt-work is the last true religion of Hollywood, Cruise is its bloodied, airborne messiah.This edition sheds the franchise’s usual espionage gloss for something darker and more philosophical, summed up in lines like “The world is changing, truth is vanishing…” and “we are masters of our fate. Nothing is written,”- as if delivered by a philosopher king in a wingsuit. The opening fifteen minutes seamlessly recap the series before diving into a plot that continues from the last film. At its core is “The Entity,” an omnipotent AI that can hack anything and predict everything. Gabriel, the villain, feels more like a sleek exposition device than a person, saddled with a tired, ‘brooding with a vendetta’ arc, leaving one wishing for more depth or surprise.The ensemble — Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg — all return, if slightly out of breath, and Angela Bassett brings presidential gravitas to a film otherwise drunk on adrenaline. Atwell's Grace is a charming foil to Cruise’s Hunt, though even she occasionally disappears under the weight of plot mechanics and submerged submarines. Rhames gets the most poignant goodbye of the franchise, while Pegg continues to prove that every nuclear countdown needs a British accent.Director Christopher McQuarrie shoots with operatic solemnity, which works wonders during the glacial submarine sequences but sometimes threatens to turn the film into a very expensive eulogy. The pace flirts with inertia in the middle stretch with serious strategic planning, which gets tedious, though it finds second wind — literally — once planes enter the picture. There are moments of self-aware camp, but they’re drowned out by the movie’s grim determination to be important.And yet, there’s undeniable beauty in this excess. The film is both a celebration and a mourning of analog heroes in a digital world, of loyalty in an age of algorithmic betrayal. Cruise doesn’t just act; he lunges through each frame with a ferocity that borders metaphysical. Is he trying to outrun death, obsolescence, or just the end credits? Hard to say. But while many franchises limp to the finish line, this one barrel-rolls across it with flames in its wake.So is it the final mission? Don’t bet your last IMF coin on it. But if it is, at least the series goes out not with a whisper, but a supersonic whoosh.