section_path: Reception/Critical response
section_name: Critical response
paragraph_text: Critical response
  
  Reviews of The Final Reckoning were generally positive, but subdued compared to previous installments. Several critics praised the action scenes in the film, but expressed displeasure in the first hour, which they felt was dragged down by exposition. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 80% of 388 critics' reviews are positive. The website's consensus reads: "Gargantuan in action, runtime, and scope, The Final Reckoning is a sentimental sendoff for Ethan Hunt that accomplishes its mission with a characteristic flair for the impossible." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 67 out of 100, based on 57 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A–" on an A+ to F scale, while those surveyed by PostTrak gave it an 89% overall positive score, with 79% saying they would definitely recommend the film.
  
  Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian rated the film five stars out of five, calling it a "wildly silly, wildly entertaining adventure which periodically gives us a greatest-hits flashback montage of the other seven films". In another positive review, Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune said the film was a "satisfying capper to an eight-film franchise" and praised the return of Rolf Saxon, "He may not hang off a biplane, but the year's unlikeliest franchise MVP makes Final Reckoning something better than superhuman: human." Robbie Collin of The Daily Telegraph said, "Even by the series' own now well-established standards, this widely presumed last entry in Tom Cruise's Mission: Impossible franchise is an awe-inspiringly bananas piece of work." Ann Hornaday of The Washington Post gave the film 3 out of 4 stars, saying it "stays true" to the franchise's "core tenets, even if it too often feels baggy and redundant", and particularly praised "a callback from the first film that strikes a particularly winning chord of humor and sentimentality".
  
  Brian Tallerico of RogerEbert.com was more critical of the film, calling its first hour "unwieldy and truly clunky" and "the worst segment in the entire franchise", although he noted that the action sequences during the film's peaks were "enough to ignore everything wrong with the movie up to that point". Cary Darling of the Houston Chronicle described the film as a "disappointing installment" that felt "bloated and tired, despite the dizzying, high-flying stunt work at the film's climax". He also criticized its runtime, stating "just shy of three hours (the longest in the series), it takes a heck of a long time to achieve lift-off".
  
  Reviews of The Final Reckoning were generally positive, but subdued compared to previous installments. Several critics praised the action scenes in the film, but expressed displeasure in the first hour, which they felt was dragged down by exposition. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 80% of 388 critics' reviews are positive. The website's consensus reads: "Gargantuan in action, runtime, and scope, The Final Reckoning is a sentimental sendoff for Ethan Hunt that accomplishes its mission with a characteristic flair for the impossible." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 67 out of 100, based on 57 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A–" on an A+ to F scale, while those surveyed by PostTrak gave it an 89% overall positive score, with 79% saying they would definitely recommend the film.
  
  Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian rated the film five stars out of five, calling it a "wildly silly, wildly entertaining adventure which periodically gives us a greatest-hits flashback montage of the other seven films". In another positive review, Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune said the film was a "satisfying capper to an eight-film franchise" and praised the return of Rolf Saxon, "He may not hang off a biplane, but the year's unlikeliest franchise MVP makes Final Reckoning something better than superhuman: human." Robbie Collin of The Daily Telegraph said, "Even by the series' own now well-established standards, this widely presumed last entry in Tom Cruise's Mission: Impossible franchise is an awe-inspiringly bananas piece of work." Ann Hornaday of The Washington Post gave the film 3 out of 4 stars, saying it "stays true" to the franchise's "core tenets, even if it too often feels baggy and redundant", and particularly praised "a callback from the first film that strikes a particularly winning chord of humor and sentimentality".
  
  Brian Tallerico of RogerEbert.com was more critical of the film, calling its first hour "unwieldy and truly clunky" and "the worst segment in the entire franchise", although he noted that the action sequences during the film's peaks were "enough to ignore everything wrong with the movie up to that point". Cary Darling of the Houston Chronicle described the film as a "disappointing installment" that felt "bloated and tired, despite the dizzying, high-flying stunt work at the film's climax". He also criticized its runtime, stating "just shy of three hours (the longest in the series), it takes a heck of a long time to achieve lift-off".