Tom Cruise Battles Artificial Intelligence and Ethan Hunt's Legacy in 'Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning'

"Our lives are not defined by any one action. Our lives are the sum of our choices."

For a franchise that always jumps the shark from installment to installment, Tom Cruise's "Mission: Impossible" has never shown signs of slowing down. Mainly due to its movie star at the center of the action, thirty years is a long time to keep a one-trick pony from going stale. Overdrawn premises, expanding ensemble casts, international filming locales, and some of the biggest budgets in film history haven't stood in Cruise's way to deliver spectacle after spectacle.

The eighth (and final?) chapter in this decades-old saga based on a television series, "Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning" is the latest collaboration between Tom Cruise and his director muse, Christopher McQuarrie. Cruise's Ethan Hunt returns where the last film left off, haunted by Ilsa Faust's (Rebecca Ferguson) death while attempting to control an all-powerful artificial intelligence run amok called The Entity. Months later, Ethan is on a, ahem, mission to stop The Entity while simultaneously trying to prevent Gabriel (Esai Morales) from gaining control over the AI program for his own devious plans.

Returning champions Benji (Simon Pegg), Luther (Ving Rhames), and Grace (Hayley Atwell) hold down the fort with their special set of skills while Ethan meets with the now-President of the United States (Angela Bassett). The President realizes The Entity's threat to global domination and America's arsenal. Though she disavows the agency once known as the Impossible Missions Force, the President trusts Ethan's gut on such matters of national security. Former adversaries-turned-allies, Director of the CIA Kittridge (Henry Czerny) and French assassin Paris (Pom Klementieff), have joined Ethan's growing team to eliminate The Entity once and for all.

The first hour of "The Final Reckoning" is laced with overdrawn exposition and leans towards connecting previous installments of the franchise in a heavy-handed manner. If one were to skip seven movies, this one sums them all up for the casual "Mission: Impossible" viewer. But once the action hits, it hits hard.

Cruise has used the film series to up the ante on the stunts he performs himself, and "The Final Reckoning" is no exception. The bloated near 3-hour runtime and nostalgia-filled first half might deter some from believing the 62-year-old actor could still pull off crazy stunts. Cruise gets the last laugh with an underwater sequence and an elongated plane hijacking that leaves palms sweating. 

The issues that plague Ethan and company throughout the film harken back to the franchise's earliest days with characters that appear in constant flashback form. These scenes do little to further the plot of this newest addition, but it's clearly McQuarrie's attempts to wrap up thirty years of movies in one foul swoop. The result is a movie that doesn't know when to stop saying "Entity" while giving ancillary characters unworthy sendoffs.

"The Final Reckoning" almost teeters into dangerously weak territory with a premise that wasn't entirely engaging when initiated in "Dead Reckoning." Here, the film gets some much-needed levity and scene-stealing from Tramell Tillman ("Severance"), who plays a submarine captain integral in one of Ethan's many death-defying undertakings. Combined with Hannah Waddingham's patriotic Admiral character, it's painfully apparent that it takes a village for Ethan to save the world.

Just when the film feels like it will get in its own way with a dizzying story, forced relationship between Ethan and Grace, and lack of favorites like Ferguson, "The Final Reckoning" stays on course to rediscover its roots. Cruise has never looked better, nor has he ever challenged himself in audacious ways as shown in this installment, proving what a force of nature he's been in bringing the character of Ethan Hunt to the silver screen. A born action star, Cruise's commitment to the role makes for an entertaining blockbuster that doesn't feel as long as its runtime would suggest.

"The Final Reckoning" is pure popcorn entertainment that takes itself seriously. Its emotional moments and awe-inspiring set pieces defy expectation.