If Ethan Hunt is the living manifestation of destiny, something similar could be said about Tom Cruise, who is doing everything in his power to make going to the movies great again. Including but not limited to, driving motorcycles off tall cliffs to entertain cinema audience in Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One! The seventh instalment in the franchise, which the actor also produces, is his third MI collaboration with Christopher McQuarrie as director. And together, this duo presents a layered action spectacle that isn’t just an edge-of-the-seat thrill with the perfect new nemesis but also shows how far Hunt and his team have come since we first met the IMF.
The loaded cast includes Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, Hayley Atwell, Rebecca Ferguson, Vanessa Kirby, Esai Morales, Pom Klementieff, Shea Whigham, Greg Tarzan Davis, Mariela Garriga, Cary Elwes, and a returning Henry Czerny as Eugene Kittridge. The screenplay is written by McQuarrie and Erik Jendresen. Lorne Balfe, who composed the score for Mission Impossible: Fallout, makes a rousing return for this one, with a score that heightens the entire experience.
There’s so much for a fan to gush about in Mission Impossible 7, which right from the start is go, go, go! It only takes a beat when it is bringing Ethan Hunt out of the shadows, as he welcomes a new recruit into the IMF. This scene is like a homing signal of sorts, and I love that even after all this time, MI does these cheesy things—the mission delivery, the delayed title card montage, the face mask pull, the focus on ‘choosing to accept’ a mission—and it just doesn’t get old. In the middle of a butt-clenching espionage action thriller, I am sitting there all mush and “Awwing”! Whaaaaat!
Hunt’s new nemesis is an entity that is both of the future and of the past. A sentient AI that has gone rogue and threatens to infiltrate the intelligence systems of entire nations. And it’s a soldier, a mysterious person from Hunt’s past that started it all for him. Honestly, what a perfect villain for the IMF and Ethan Hunt to conquer at this stage of the franchise. IMF has often been called out for its utter disregard for rules and unplanned missions. A rogue AI, which is a very real threat to our world IRL, isn’t just in keeping with the current times, but also plays well into both the way IMF operates, as well as the redundancy of human-led intelligence in a digital world.
And then, there’s Hunt. The living manifestation of destiny. The human emotional intelligence that can change the course of world history by saving one random stranger. Someone for whom the life of one will always matter as much as the life of many, and always more than his own. He is the unpredictable variable, in an algorithm-controlled world. For the AI then, to both prey on this very quality of him and be threatened by it, is just so damn poetic. And this very mission brings back not one but two people from Hunt’s past, because Henry Czerny is back as Kittridge? Brilliant. Love it. His dialogue delivery is just so delicious!
True to its nautical title’s meaning, Dead Reckoning Part One builds on a deep and rich history of the Mission Impossible world, calculating back from where it all began to show us how far the characters have come and got to go. The friendship between Hunt and his team—Benji Dunn (Pegg) and Luther Stickell (Rhames)—is so lived-in, and it shows in how they each function during their various ops, making choices, understanding looks, and familiarity with how the other will react.
I read on Twitter the epiphany that how this billion-dollar action franchise is a story about friendship, and it is not wrong. You feel both the comfort and the fear that each of them must feel for the other during these missions, and credit due to Simon Pegg and Ving Rhames for making these characters so indispensable. I’ve always felt so deeply for the relationship between Ilsa Faust and Ethan Hunt, that I thirsted for more of them in this film. A new addition, Hayley Atwell brings that mischievous charm to her Grace and does have good chemistry with Cruise, but what Rebecca Ferguson and Tom Cruise brought to the relationship between their characters is the OTP endgame.
Pom Klementieff is possibly my favourite new addition to this cast. Her Paris barely has any dialogue but she let us know in so many ways that Paris was having wicked fun chasing Ethan all around Rome.
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Dead Reckoning Part One doesn’t forget its ultimate mission: It aims to entertain. And damn, if it isn’t spectacular, cinematic fun! It comes via banter, Pegg’s Benji being his usual hilarious self, Vanessa Kirby’s volatile White Widow and her poor brother Zola, Briggs and Degas missing out on catching Ethan by inches every time, and that look of exasperation on Ethan’s face right before he realises he’ll have to fulfil his IMF KRAs and pull something off that’s literally impossible, like the bike stunt that really is all that it is hyped to be.
Three bombastic action sequences—a car chase in Rome, where Hunt drives single-handed; riding a bike off a cliff, and a train sequence that won’t let you catch a breather!—make sure you feel in your pores just how urgent everything is and how fatal the stakes are. And yet, there’s no underplaying that this isn’t a young team; no matter how motivated and experienced, some things don’t work their way. There’s a certain exhaustion to how they act and react, from all that they’ve been through and all the work that’s still left.
Now, as much as I wanted to exit the theatre screaming, “Fantastic! No Notes!”, I do, in fact, have a few bees buzzing around in my bonnet. Much like its name, which is a mouthful, the movie is full to the brim trying to do a lot of things. With a slew of new characters joining the ensemble of returning ones and multiple entities with different interests in the game, Dead Reckoning Part One does overwhelm. The Mission Impossible films have often overwhelmed me with their action sequences, which I welcome. But the rest, from the MacGuffin being chased to the villain being thwarted, has been simple, linear, and efficient. In Dead Reckoning Part One, that changes.
The film is paced at break-neck speed, which leaves little space for you to prod and poke at its loopholes. And they are bound to creep in, with a nemesis like sentient AI thrown into the mix, where the possibilities of what it can and cannot do are endless. It made me wonder if the screenplay could’ve been fine-tuned, the scenes that intercut arranged differently to make the plot less dense, and the characters’ actions register better. I wouldn’t do away with anything from the film, or add anything else. I’d just want it structured better, you know?
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Verdict
Has anyone ever chosen not to accept their mission? Pfft, the choice is a no-brainer, just like the entertainment value of an MI movie. I haven’t yet come across one that I didn’t enjoy!
Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One is a total thrill ride, taking the action, the drama, and Tom Cruise’s penchant for death-defying stunts several notches higher. Its choice of mission, of Ethan Hunt vs AI, has me rooting so hard for the hero, because of all the Twitter threads I read about AI threatening my job as a writer.
Believe the hype, believe in Tom Cruise’s ability to entertain his audience and save the movie theatre experience which lately has seemed an impossible mission not even the biggest franchises can accomplish. All while steering the wheel with one hand.
Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One is currently in cinemas.