Mission: Impossible-The Final Reckoning | IN THEATERS

Tom Cruise's latest blockbuster has stunning stunts, but the fun is missing

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In one breathtaking sequence Cruise ventures into a leaking nuclear sub.

In the course of its 2-hour, 49-minute running time, Reckoning gives you two fleeting moments that suggest that, yes, even Tom Cruise is required to obey the laws of physics. In the first, he's resurfacing from the depths of an arctic sea when, cramping with the bends, he curls into the fetal position and floats helplessly through the water. Much later in the film, gravity hurls him in the opposite direction: He plummets, just as helplessly, down through the sky and vanishes in a cloud. You get a sense of Cruise as just another solitary soul, a speck drifting through time and space.

Don't kid yourself.

In this surprisingly dour conclusion to 2023's