Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible franchise has been running intermittently since 1996 but it purports to all come to an end in The Final Reckoning, released to cinemas worldwide this weekend. To readers wondering if it sticks the landing, provides a worthy finale, or even how long it is, your answers are no, no, and much too long. Long film is long. Some sections were boring enough for me to compose a haiku in my head.

The long film is long.
Run Tom. Run long. Run Tom run.
Long long run Tom. Long.

In all honesty The Final Reckoning is not a terrible film, but it is an enormously disappointing one. Previous Mission sequels have represented some of the very best American action cinema of the past half-century, with a creative high point somewhere between Ghost Protocol (2011) and Rogue Nation (2015). To see its grand finale so weirdly miscalculated genuinely breaks my heart.

The new film picks up two months after 2023’s Dead Reckoning Part 1. An artificial intelligence named the Entity has taken over most of the world’s nuclear arsenal, with days left before it controls them all and launches a final attack on the human race. Superspy Ethan Hunt (Cruise) literally holds the key to defeating the Entity, but as always has gone rogue from the American government. With an assembled team of agents, thieves, and assassins, Hunt races against the villainous Gabriel (Esai Morales) for control of the world’s fate.

This is by far the largest Mission: Impossible in terms of scale, and it is easy to understand why its makers chose to take that approach. It is intended as a grand finale to an eight-film series, and an unmissable conclusion of an epic action saga. It is also a colossal mistake, for two fairly obvious reasons. The first is tone: Mission: Impossible has never been about grand, large scale epic narratives. For 29 years it has been about close, personal chases, fist fights, and sprints through city back streets. It is this up-close, visceral sort of presentation that made it the commercial success that it is, and a core reason why Tom Cruise has made such a winning formula out of doing his own death-defying stunts – each captured up close so his audience knows that it is really Cruise doing them.

The second problem is that, generally speaking, Mission: Impossible was never about an ongoing serialised narrative. Characters from old films return in new ones, and certainly the last four or five films have felt more connected than before, but in trying to make The Final Reckoning the culmination of an eight-film storyline means bringing back elements from the original 1996 film, as well as nonsensically redefining the whole of Mission: Impossible III into something else entirely. These attempts are messy, unnecessary, and contribute most of the dead weight to the film’s tediously bloated opening act. What seems particularly egregious is that the film invents new back story out of earlier sequels while actively abandoning back story from Dead Reckoning – to which this is a direct continuation.

The story scale here is simply too big for its own good. It moves too far geographically, and does so much too slowly. It has a huge number of characters compared to its predecessors. It is, I believe, the first and only Mission: Impossible to regularly cut back to the US President and a bunch of generals watching a doomsday clock in a control room. The stereotype count in these sequences is through the roof, but worse than that they simply burn up time. Director Christopher McQuarrie could have saved half an hour right here.

These films tend to ride or fall based on their action sequences, and this time around they feel either too reminiscent of earlier films – Hunt and a female accomplice fight their way out of a torture room, or Hunt risk drowning undertaking a lengthy underwater task – or actively feel slow. Likely the best set piece involves exploring the wreck of a submarine that’s shifting across the ocean floor, causing nuclear missiles to come loose in the water and turning into deadly blunt instruments. It is effective, and it’s tense, but it’s also slow in a movie desperately in need of some pace. The film’s climax, widely promoted in posters and trailers, involves duelling biplanes – hardly the harbinger of edge-of-your-seat adrenaline rides.

Weirdly some of the best elements of the film come from its supporting characters. Hannah Waddingham, an actor I have not previously appreciated, makes for a superb aircraft carrier commander. Likewise Tramell Tillman and Katy O’Brian are hugely watchable as the crew of an American submarine.

The film’s leads are generally excellent. For Cruise, Ving Rhames, and Simon Pegg, these characters are second nature by now. Hayley Atwell finds a lot of humour in her role, although the absence of Rebecca Ferguson’s Ilsa Faust is keenly felt. Esai Morales is strong, but underused by the screenplay. Similarly Angela Bassett delivers a world of gravitas, but there is honestly no reason for her character to exist in the film at all. It is nice to Pom Klementieff retained; she was one of the more entertaining new characters in Dead Reckoning.

The biggest surprise about this Final Reckoning is how much of the Mission: Impossible elements it neglects to include. One winds up missing the sudden plot developments and twists, and the double-crosses, or a classic bait-and-switch climax. The film drags the audience along for almost three hours, waiting for the needle to drop, and then does not even drop in Lalo Shifrin’s iconic theme tune until the credits roll.

I think there is a promising future for Mission: Impossible on screen, but I think it means re-embracing the ensemble casts of its TV origins. I think it means abandoning jaw-dropping aerial stunts in favour of a pacier heist narrative. There are plenty of characters left with a lot of potential for future adventures. Preferable shorter, more tightly edited ones. Honestly it would be a shame to abandon Mission: Impossible here: not with a bang, or even a whimper – just a slow tortured gasp of breath like Benji with a collapsed lung.