A fun, but overlong MI conclusion. That is if it is the last entry.

If you recall the first part of “Mission: Impossible-Dead Reckoning,” Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt had to stop the new villain Gabriel (Esai Morales) from setting off an A.I. doomsday device known as the Entity. The villain manages to escape, but not before Ethan snatches the key from him.

Now, “The Final Reckoning” has the weapon turning everyone against each other with the power of A.I., and at this point, it’s difficult for even Ethan’s IMF agency to trust him. On one hand, if he defies his orders, he could save the world. But if he screws up, the world could end. And if his agency takes matters into their own hands, then the world could end as well. So, Ethan needs them to trust him “one last time,” and we, the fans and audience, have always trusted him. But I wonder if he can trust the audience.

I recall a conversation from a friend of mine at the time of the first part’s release which was in the same year with “Fast X” and “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.” And he told me he didn’t really like sequel cliffhangers, and as I described to you in the first paragraph, the villain doesn’t get away with the weapon. Besides, if you put both movies together, it would have been over 5 hours. Splitting them into two movies is obviously the better idea, but I think I prefer the first part over the second part.

At this point, Ethan’s remaining alleys consist of the computer tech Luther Strickel (Ving Rhames), the other tech Benji (Simon Pegg), the pickpocket-turned-IMF agent Grace (Hayley Atwell), the assassin-turned-goodie Paris (Pom Klementieff), and the young IMF agent Degas (Greg Tarzan Davis). And the people cautious of Ethan’s actions include the former-CIA-director-turned-POTUS Erika Sloane (Angela Bassett) and the former-MIF-director-turned-CIA-director Eugene Kittridge (Henry Czerny).

I saw “Mission: Impossible-The Final Reckoning” at an IMAX theater in NYC last week, and it’s definitely an action movie you want to see in theaters and wait months and months for it to come on Blu-Ray or streaming services. We don’t need to see it online already; we need to keep making the movie-going experience a reality. This is one of those “See what you think” kind of sequels, and I needed time to examine my thoughts. And I had fun with the action sequences and jokes, but this whole thing needed to be shorter.

I also was chewing the fat with a grocery store cashier who shared his passion for Robert De Niro, Tom Cruise, and Jack Nicholson, and in regards to Cruise, we both admitted our affection for “Top Gun” and “A Few Good Men.” He also admitted that those two films distinct Cruise from his other roles, in terms of his acting abilities. And I know he always delivers the goods as Ethan Hunt and he still does here. Doing his own stunts, while also adding some sly wit and attitude in the mix. There are times when you can tell when there are green screens, but there are also times when you believe he’s risking his life.

We also get some entertaining work from the supporting cast. I still like Rhames, Pegg, Atwell, Morales, Klementieff, and Bassett, I like how they add other names like Nick Offerman (as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) and Hannah Waddingham (as an Admiral) in the mix, and I like some of the throwbacks to the 1996 film. But I would have liked it better if the screenplay they were given was more challenging and less recycled.

The budget for “Mission: Impossible-The Final Reckoning” is between $300 and $400 million, which is a lot more than the last entry. And while I think the budget here is more well spent than what the Russo brothers put in their crappy robots and wasted talents in “The Electric State,” I still think that these amazing action sequences take too long, and we would like to get to the pay-off of those scenes soon.

This review will self destruct in 5 seconds.