In 'Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning,' Tom Cruise is too controlled

By Linda Holmes,

Aisha Harris, Chris Klimek, Wailin Wong, Hafsa Fathima, Mike Katzif, Jessica Reedy

Published May 23, 2025 at 9:08 AM EDT

Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning. — Tom Cruise in *Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning.*

In Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, Tom Cruise has to save the world (again). But this time, as the movie stresses repeatedly, the stakes are really, really high. Higher than the buildings Tom sprints across or the planes he fights bad guys on. There's an AI that wants to destroy humanity, and Tom and his allies try to pull off the feat of all our lifetimes. Will he? Does it even matter? It's Tom Cruise doing Tom Cruise things in London, the Bering Sea, and beyond.

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Linda Holmes

Linda Holmes is a pop culture correspondent for NPR and the host of Pop Culture Happy Hour. She began her professional life as an attorney. In time, however, her affection for writing, popular culture, and the online universe eclipsed her legal ambitions. She shoved her law degree in the back of the closet, gave its living room space to DVD sets of The Wire, and never looked back.

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Aisha Harris

Aisha Harris is a host of Pop Culture Happy Hour.

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Chris Klimek

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Wailin Wong

Wailin Wong is a long-time business and economics journalist who's reported from a Chilean mountaintop, an embalming fluid factory and lots of places in between. She is a host of The Indicator from Planet Money. Previously, she launched and co-hosted two branded podcasts for a software company and covered tech and startups for the Chicago Tribune. Wailin started her career as a correspondent for Dow Jones Newswires in Buenos Aires. In her spare time, she plays violin in one of the oldest community orchestras in the U.S.

Hafsa Fathima

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Mike Katzif

Jessica Reedy

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