Eighth movie is a thrilling send-off — if it’s actually the last one

Ethan Hunt’s most impossible mission yet? Getting viewers to tear up at the end of the eighth and possibly last “Mission: Impossible” film, “The Final Reckoning.”

Our eyes have often been wide open in awe during this spectacle-driven 29-year movie series, but rarely ever wet.

However, when Ving Rhames’ Luther said to Tom Cruise’s IMF agent, “The world still needs you,” I couldn’t help but sniffle in agreement.

The “Mission: Impossible” franchise, whether kaput or continuing (which will require a lot of ka-ching), remains some of the best action flicks out there.  

Sixty-two-year-old Cruise, more of a high school senior than a senior citizen, still sprints across London’s Westminster Bridge past Big Ben like he’s a flesh-and-bones missile. Just as naturally, he charmingly cracks wise with the suave ease of Roger Moore. And behind the camera as a producer, the man cares a great deal about the quality of these movies, and it shows in the fastidious details.

Running in the footsteps of the last two entries directed by Christopher McQuarrie, “Fallout” and “Dead Reckoning,” No. 8 is another high-voltage, gargantuanly envisioned test of Cruise’s bodily limits. Only this franchise can make wincing fun. 

With every passing “M:I,” the question becomes less “Will Ethan Hunt survive” than “Will Tom Cruise?”

“Final Reckoning’s” showcase stunt — Cruise climbing into a biplane thousands of feet in the air above South Africa and then piloting it as his windswept skin looks like it’s about to peel off — trumps anything Marvel has accomplished in 17 years.

Before that grand aerial finale, an underwater sequence in an abandoned submarine doesn’t terrify your lungs quite as much as the one in “Rogue Nation” did, but it’s nonetheless suspenseful and perilous as he dodges plunging debris that could crush him.

The hand-to-hand combat, athletic and funny, finds new ways to tickle us, too. During what is a Planet Fitness member’s worst nightmare, a poor baddie’s face becomes acquainted with a moving treadmill.

When Hayley Atwell’s reformed pickpocket Grace witnesses Ethan brutalize a thug — while we see her reactions and not the carnage — it’s gnarly and hilarious. “Austin Powers”-esque.

At two hours and 49 minutes — the series’ biggest runtime — “Final Reckoning” is too long. That accounts for the missing half a star. Yet because it never catches its breath or lets its energy level drop a millimeter, the film clips along.

It continues where “Dead Reckoning” left off two years ago, with Ethan and Co. needing a two-part key to destroy “The Entity” — an all-powerful artificial intelligence being that has gained control over the world’s most powerful countries’ nukes.

It’s apt that “Mission: Impossible,” which is devoted to tactile feats performed by its game star instead of fake effects, would make AI the villain.

The president (a somehow more intense than usual Angela Bassett) needs Hunt to stop it, while the government has issues with the Impossible Mission Force’s unorthodox and often destructive methods.

The real key to enjoying the movie, though, is to not think too much about the plot. If you do, your brain might retire and move to Boca Raton. That Ethan needs to swim to the bottom of the Bering Sea to recover the Entity’s source code and then co-mingle it with the two-part key is hard to even type.

The franchise’s formula, when it’s executed as well as it is here, is too winning for a knotty story to matter.

The ensemble of oddballs — Rhames, Simon Pegg’s neurotic Benji, Atwell’s glaring Grace, Henry Czerny’s Mojave-dry Kittridge and Esai Morales’ unhinged assassin Gabriel — are as rip-roaring company as ever. The locales — London, Alaska, Africa — are escapist. And Cruise’s escalating feats, jaw-dropping.

So, is this really the end?

“Final Reckoning” ties in several elements from the first 1996 Brian De Palma movie that suggest Hunt’s journey has come full circle. But McQuarrie and Cruise keep it pretty open-ended. For example, a beloved character dies, but we don’t actually watch it happen. John Wick could be decapitated in the next sequel, and he’d still come back if it makes enough money. 

While going out on a high is the honorable thing to do, I’d be there for the final, final reckoning.