Collection
Mission: Impossible
Tom Cruise running, for thirty years.
Which order? Release order; the series gets better from the fourth.
The films, in release order
- 1
Mission: Impossible 1996Brian De Palma’s spy thriller is tense, ingenious entertainment, with Tom Cruise making its elaborate schemes feel urgent. The screenplay makes a simple task needlessly difficult to follow, but the set-pieces are worth the trouble.Fi1m 81 - 2
Mission: Impossible II 2000John Woo turns the series into a one-man romance with doves and slow motion, and for half an hour, in Utah and Seville, it works. Then the plot arrives, Dougray Scott sulks through it, and two fine set pieces are left to carry the rest.Fi1m 55 - 3
Mission: Impossible III 2006J.J. Abrams’s first film is the fastest of the three, with a bridge sequence that had us ducking and, in Philip Seymour Hoffman, a villain who never raises his voice. Underneath, the plot is television, and the object everyone chases is never explained.Fi1m 70 - 4
Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol 2011Brad Bird makes a tense, funny team adventure out of unreliable gadgets and difficult jobs. The villain is thin and the pace slips later, but the action is unusually easy to follow and hard to sit through calmly.Fi1m 82 - 5
Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation 2015Christopher McQuarrie’s entry is the most carefully built of the series so far, with a Vienna opera sequence as good as anything the genre has managed in years. The plot is a MacGuffin in a box, and the London finale runs long.Fi1m 76 - 6
Mission: Impossible - Fallout 2018Christopher McQuarrie delivers forceful, unusually clear action, with Tom Cruise making the danger matter through sheer physical effort. The spy plot is needlessly tangled, and 147 minutes is generous, but we recommend it for the stunts.Fi1m 87 - 7
Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One 2023Christopher McQuarrie stages three of the best action sequences the series has produced and wraps them in an hour of people explaining an algorithm to each other. Worth your evening for the Rome chase alone; bring patience for the briefings.Fi1m 74 - 8
Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning 2025Christopher McQuarrie’s eighth *Mission: Impossible* has two set pieces, one under the sea and one in the air, as good as any the series has produced. It also has an hour of people explaining the plot to each other before either arrives.Fi1m 63
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