July 16, 2023 · Watch the official trailer
If the latest Tom Cruise movie is going to be worth anything, part two better be absolutely incredible.
Cruise’s fourth collaboration with writer/director Christopher McQuarrie and the seventh installment in the “Mission: Impossible” franchise sees a lot of unanswered questions that really make this weekend’s biggest blockbuster a complete mystery.
At nearly three hours long, “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One” has a lot of action, a lot of talking and a lot of character development. And although audiences don’t have to have watched the previous six entries in the canon before going to the theaters, there’s significantly convoluted drama that has to be slogged through in order to see Cruise run, jump, ride a motorcycle and escape death again and again and again.
In Cruise’s seventh turn as rogue special agent Ethan Hunt, “Dead Reckoning Part One” finds Hunt and his allies on the trail of a key that unlocks untold power in the form of stealth artificial intelligence, which doesn’t make for visually interesting cinema. McQuarrie and Cruise have to work around this by ramping up the audaciousness of the film’s many action sequences.
The main reason anyone remains remotely interested in these films is to see to what lengths Cruise will go to drive people to the theater and his turn here is yet another astounding effort.
It’s in the film’s numerously practical stunt sequences that “Dead Reckoning Part One” truly comes alive whether that’s fully integrated car chases with precision driving and stunning visuals to boot or Cruise defying gravity again by soaring his motorcycle off a cliff or an expansive 20-plus minute fight scene on a train that puts a positive endcap on an otherwise awkwardly transitioned film.
It's clear throughout all of McQuarrie and Cruise’s collaborations that the stuntwork comes first and these moments are the reason “Mission: Impossible” films exist in the first place. Because Cruise lives for the thrill of the moment, he becomes his own stuntman which makes the impracticality of the action sequences he pulls off even more dazzling and reinforces Ethan Hunt’s desire to do anything and everything, risking his life, to save the world as a whole.
The real question becomes how good the film can be if it’s not as good as the one that precedes it. Cruise and McQuarrie set the bar so high with 2018’s “Mission: Impossible – Fallout” that this incomplete, at times awkward and overly technical film does not have the self-contained intensity of the prior installment.
The action is good, especially a very tight hallway fight scene in close quarters that allows cinematographer Fraser Taggart to really engage with the action in a new way for the franchise and the film’s more bombastic moments have a great energy to them, but it’s not nearly as consistent tonally as prior installments were.
Part of the issue may end up being simply that audiences don’t know enough about Esai Morales’ villainous Gabriel, a man whose true motives aren’t ever explored in this film and it often feels as if Hunt and his team are racing against a ghost or against themselves, but doesn’t keep the same dynamic.
While it’s a relatively incomplete film, there is enough in both Cruise’s performance and the dynamic action sequences to make “Dead Reckoning Part One” worth seeking out in theaters although the film is not so arresting that it must be seen on an IMAX screen like Christopher Nolan’s forthcoming “Oppenheimer” film.
Truly, “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One” can’t be fairly judged until the second half releases in theaters in early summer next year though the recently announced actors’ strike could further delay those plans and dampen the momentum Cruise seems to be carrying.
Leave a Reply