Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, Part One (2023) | REVIEW

Directed by Christopher McQuarrie (M:I – Fallout) — Screenplay by Christopher McQuarrie and Erik Jendresen.

During, and in the immediate aftermath of, the COVID-19 pandemic, certain films tried and failed to bring loads of people back into theaters. When all else — including a pretty good and underappreciated Christopher Nolan film — failed to win back the moviegoing audience, Tom Cruise, in true Ethan Hunt fashion, accepted the mission to ‘save cinema.’ And, well, he sort of did. His and Joseph Kosinski’s Top Gun Maverick (in which Cruise’s hero, in a way, sets out to prove that human beings are more capable than unmanned fighter aircrafts) was such a hit that Steven Spielberg reportedly proclaimed that Tom Cruise, now 61 years of age, “saved Hollywood’s ass,” and that his film might have “saved the entire theatrical distribution.” “Is there anything Tom Cruise can’t do?” you might ask. He seems adamant to test that question out with the awe-inspiring stunts that he insists on doing each and every time he headlines a major motion picture nowadays. Now, with Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, Part One, Tom Cruise, the savior of the theatrical industry, is back as Ethan Hunt, the IMF agent and so-called living manifestation of destiny, and this time he wants to fight back against AI and algorithms (some might even suggest he’s up against streaming algorithms, thus taking that saving cinema allegory even farther). That’s right, it’s the second Tom Cruise film in a row to be about a man fighting back against technological advancements, and, once again, it doesn’t disappoint. This movie is a lot of fun. 

In Christopher McQuarrie’s Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, Part One, Ethan Hunt (played by Tom Cruise) is assigned a mission by former IMF director Eugene Kittridge (played by Henry Czerny) to retrieve one half of a key that, when assembled together with the second half, may allow the holder to control a powerful sentient AI — known as the Entity — that recently went rogue. However, Ethan believes that the Entity is too dangerous to let fall into the wrong hands, including his superiors. Therefore Ethan and his team go rogue on a mission to find both halves of the key and destroy the omniscient AI. 

This series of films has grown to become one of the most reliable modern action franchises. The filmmakers’ insistence on stunts and practical, in-camera action is one of the things that many of us love about these films (and one of the reasons why people loved Top Gun Maverick). Since M:I-4, also known as Ghost Protocol, these films have primarily been marketed on the jaw-dropping stunts that Tom Cruise insists on doing in real life to heighten our investment in the action and to fully make it an edge-of-your-seat theatrical event. Ghost Protocol had the Burj Khalifa climb, Rogue Nation had Cruise hanging on to the side of an airplane that was taking off, Fallout had the HALO jump and the helicopter stuff, and now Dead Reckoning, Part One has mostly been marketed on how Tom Cruise drives a motorcycle off a mountain and then parachutes. Everyone has known about this stunt for months, so you know that it is coming and you know almost everything about it. That is a fact that takes some of the sheer awesomeness of the stunt out of the theatrical experience. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still incredible and impressive — but I think some people’s reaction will be something close to a “well, there it is.” However, even though you’ve seen most of that aforementioned stunt, there are still so many excellent action set-pieces here. There is a breathtaking and much-less-marketed action sequence set around a train (parts of it are very reminiscent of the video game Uncharted 2: Among Thieves). There’s a great submarine sequence that really surprised me. There is an exhilarating airport scene where Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, and Tom Cruise get together to outsmart authorities and prevent a massive explosion. And then there is a gloriously entertaining chase sequence set in Rome during which our two lead characters — Tom Cruise and Mission: Impossible newcomer Hayley Atwell — are handcuffed to each other in a yellow Fiat 500. In that last scene, Cruise and Atwell share some screwball comedy energy. And, yes, Tom Cruise runs. A lot. This movie has everything that makes a Mission: Impossible movie great. Including excellent music — there are these great moments in the film when the diegetic sound just completely disappears and the beautiful music booms, so as to let Lorne Balfe’s powerful score stand on its own. At its best, it is nail-bitingly intense. There were moments when I thought to myself when I had last blinked. I’ll also add that McQuarrie and DP Fraser Taggart frame certain scenes — with these disorienting Dutch tilt close-ups — in a way that appeared to deliberately call back to Brian DePalma’s original film.

In my review of last month’s The Flash, I wrote at length about how timing can sometimes make or break a release. With that superhero flick about DC’s favorite speedster, it suffered from being released two weeks after the release of a much better superhero film (Across the Spider-Verse) that was about the very same thing. Whereas poor timing hurt Andy Muschietti’s The Flash, excellent timing only makes Christopher McQuarrie’s Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, Part One look better. You see, two weeks ago, another film was released that, like Dead Reckoning, Part One, had a central MacGuffin split into two halves that interested parties were scrambling to assemble first (with world-ending implications), had an extensive sequence set on top of a train (with characters fighting on top of said train), had a subway scene, and had an elaborate sequence in which our two leads are being chased through a major international city. That film was Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. And while I did really enjoy Dial of Destiny, one of my issues with that film was that the action set-pieces didn’t have the same magic that previous installments had. Well, that comparison is thusly quite favorable to Dead Reckoning, Part One as all of its action set-pieces are genuinely thrilling, edge-of-your-seat stuff. Even beyond the action mechanics and MacGuffin details, there is another key reason why this seventh installment has excellent timing. At the time of writing, WGA and SAG-AFTRA are on strike in part due to major studios not wanting to give creatives assurances around AI and streaming. As such, even the particulars of the plot feel super zeitgeisty in this day and age when everyone is talking about stuff like AI images and trailers, questionable deep fakes, likeness ownership, and ChatGPT. 

Tom Cruise, Ving Rhames, Rebecca Ferguson, and Simon Pegg all return in fine form alongside a stacked cast that also includes other returning faces (including Henry Czerny and Vanessa Kirby). They are as fun and intensely driven as we have come to know them. But there are also a handful of newcomers that are extremely fun to watch. Marvel’s Peggy Carter, Hayley Atwell (Captain America: The First Avenger), is, as mentioned, essentially the second lead in Dead Reckoning, Part One. Atwell plays a charming and playful pickpocket named Grace, who plays cat and mouse with Ethan Hunt who both wants what she has, wants to keep her safe, and wants to recruit her. Atwell is a great addition to the core cast, and it is fun to see her world-class pickpocket suddenly find herself out of her depth. I should add that one of the really fun bits that we specifically get out of Ethan and Grace’s interactions are these fun moments of close-up magic that I really dug. 

While Ethan tries to win over Grace and get the keys, US agents played by Shea Whigham and Greg Tarzan Davies follow in his footsteps hoping to take the rogue agent in for questioning. Their race to bring in Hunt leads to some hilarious Catch Me If You Can-esque gags and near-misses. Whigham, who always makes whatever he is in better, brings an experienced annoyance to his character which is honestly really fun to watch, and Davies is his younger sidekick who follows along with Whigham’s character but also starts to poke holes in the story they’ve been fed by their government. Davies and Whigham share a really entertaining rapport. Ethan Hunt and Grace aren’t just chased by the US government’s men, they’ve also got Guardians of the Galaxy, Vols. 2 and 3’s Pom Klementieff chasing them around Rome and Venice to get ahold of the central MacGuffin. Klementieff is delightful, charming, and undeniably hilarious as Mantis in her Marvel films, but here she gets to do something a little bit different. She doesn’t have a lot of speaking lines in the film, but she delivers an intense and feisty physical performance. She always looks insanely cool and sometimes the glare in her eyes is downright sadistic. Klementieff’s henchwoman almost runs away with the movie. 

Unfortunately, one of the other newcomers is saddled with a character that doesn’t fully work. Esai Morales plays Gabriel, who is essentially the right-hand man or human avatar of ‘the Entity,’ and his character is designed to be this person from Ethan Hunt’s past. Not only is he integral to our lead’s past, we repeatedly see this one brief and unclear scene wherein he executes someone in front of Hunt (whose face isn’t actually seen in this flashback). Morales plays the antagonist with a knowing smile, and he isn’t doing a bad job, but there just isn’t enough to latch onto as a viewer. Dead Reckoning, Part Two will probably expand on his and Hunt’s shared past (it frankly has to), but, at this point in time, his backstory is woefully underexplained to such an extent that Hunt’s animosity towards him doesn’t exactly land as smoothly as intended. I’ll add that one of the other issues that I had with the film was a major character development that didn’t feel fully earned or worthwhile. This development is meant to inspire some of that aforementioned animosity towards the antagonist in you as an audience member, but it feels like a misguided decision to me, for reasons that I can’t get into without going into spoilers. Other than these larger issues, I have minor nitpicks here and there, and I should also say that the film has this odd tendency to restate the purpose of the MacGuffin again and again in vague speeches that don’t really elaborate all that much on the original explanation. These expository dialogue scenes can be a little bit clunky, admittedly. 

This next thing is less of a flaw and more of a fascination. You see, it feels to me like Christopher McQuarrie and Erik Jendresen’s script wants audiences to be one step ahead of its heroes. The film opens by showing exactly what the central MacGuffin opens and how the AI malfunctioned or ‘fought back.’ Now, this scene is partly there to inform us of how powerful and scary the AI is, but the scene also makes it so that we know these aforementioned important details prior to the title sequence, but these very details are things that Ethan Hunt is constantly chasing throughout the film. One of the key pieces of information that Gabriel seeks to keep from others is the location of a vault, which audiences kind of know from the get-go. In a way, McQuarrie’s film is designed to put you in a similar position to the Entity. You know what the key opens, you know where the vault is, and you know exactly what Ethan Hunt is and isn’t willing to do to get ahold of the key. The aforementioned misguided character development is somewhat telegraphed, and it is partly telegraphed because we know Ethan as well as the AI does. This way of laying out information for the audience intrigues me, though the second part of the film (or interviews) could reveal exactly how intentional all of this was to McQuarrie. 

Christopher McQuarrie’s incredibly zeitgeisty Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, Part One will undoubtedly go down as one of the best action films of the year. It features breathtaking stunts, as well as action set-pieces that are genuine franchise highlights. It is a high-tier Mission: Impossible movie (and is arguably the most comedic of these films), but it doesn’t quite reach the high bar set by Mission: Impossible – Fallout due to an underbaked origin story for the human antagonist, but also because it does suffer slightly from the ‘Part One-ness’ of it all. It ends on a relatively satisfying note after one of those intense action set-pieces that take your breath away, but it is an incomplete story and there is no getting around that. I can’t wait to see what McQuarrie and Cruise have conjured up for the next one. At the very least, this film shows that the creative team behind these films is still firing on all cylinders.

8.5 out of 10

– Review Written by Jeffrey Rex Bertelsen.