“Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning” dropped last weekend and… I have issues.

Now fam, I love me some action movies. You know this. And I love me some “Mission: Impossible” movies.

I even love the second one that John Woo made, which had so many plot holes, because Woo had a three-hour-plus cut, and Tom Cruise as producer took over the edit and cut it down. I even watched movies one, five through seven before heading out to see “The Final Reckoning” the other night.

But imma say it.

The series has become all stunts and no heart. I mean, I actually dozed off in the middle of that long ass movie (please see my blog post about keeping action movies to two hours or less). 

I’m glad the movie didn’t pull a James Bond “No Time to Die” ending, but there were so many places that movie could have gone. But nope! We have to move on to the next stunt piece! Continue with the nonsensical plot and the cardboard-thin characters!

I mean, how you gonna drop that Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) was framed for murder by an AI-controlled human assassin and just gloss over that? Or say that all the Impossible Mission Force agents were criminals given a second chance, but not tell us what Benji (Simon Pegg) and Luther (Ving Rhames) did to get in?

Meanwhile, you establish that a rogue artificial intelligence called “The Entity” has turned humans into AI cultists and only use that for a surprise attack without thinking about the moral implications? Nope! Stunt piece to go to!

Box office numbers will tell us if this is truly the “final” chapter in the franchise. Seeing how the movie couldn’t even get in the big IMAX theaters because of “Lilo and Stitch” doesn’t bode well.

But maybe they can at least get that inaugural Oscar for stunts because man! That’s the one thing these guys excelled at. Which is good because that seems to be all they were going for.

Curiously, the “M:I” franchise turned out like that other gonzo action stunt franchise, “Fast and Furious.” It has a good start, stumbled in the second and third outings, found its feet with the fourth movie, had its best efforts with five and six, and then lost its way after seven.

P.S. – They still did Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) dirty in “Dead Reckoning” and I will die on that hill. I know it was because Ferguson wanted to move on from the franchise, but c’mon! We could have had an entire series of Ilsa movies!