By Elias Savada.
Cruise and company battle an out-of-control sentient AI creation called ‘the Entity,’ which seems to have no weak points and quite a global advantage…. Preposterous? You bet. Fun? Of course!”
All the movie magic and stunt work you’ve grown to admire in the Mission: Impossible series comes down to two words: Tom Cruise. He’s the plum in this adventure pudding. This sixth sequel to Brian DePalma’s 1996 original will steamroll through the world’s multiplexes and provide eye-popping visuals and incredible editing and camerawork that should be viewed on the BIG SCREEN. In the wake of The Flash (big disaster, but I liked it) and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (lesser failure, but gonna take a miracle to recoup its $295 million budget – before marketing), comes this week’s let’s-outdo-it-again, globetrotting, revved-up action-adventure piece. I predict a quick profit.
It’s one of the longest (163 minutes) coming attractions that will keep you thoroughly entertained.
Despite its newsworthy COVID-19 rants from the 61-year-old star and various coronavirus-related delays (it started filmed the day Venice locked down), which deferred its release from nearly two years, it might have been a blessing for theater owners – to vitalize this year’s box office – much like Cruise did with last year’s Top Gun: Maverick.
For those of us old enough to remember, it was a successful 7-season (1966-1973) tv series created by Bruce Geller, although I’ll bet the $290 budget of the current feature was more than all the 171 episodes combined. But it’s Cruise, and his frequent collaborator Christopher McQuarrie (first on board with the fifth film, 2015’s Mission: Impossible: Rogue Nation), who have put their mark on the spy action series that continues to elevate it with each installment. McQuarrie and Erik Jendresen crafted the screenplay, which centers around an out-of-control sentient AI creation called “the Entity,” which seems to have no weak points and quite a global advantage over the small, easygoing IMF force: Ethan Hunt (Cruise), other returning veterans Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames), Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg), and MI6 agent Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson). New meanies include an arms dealer known as “White Widow” (Vanessa Kirby), the enigmatic Gabriel (Esai Morales), a proxy who obediently reports to the all-powerful Artificial Intelligence, and his henchwoman Paris (Pom Klementieff aka Mantis in the Guardians of the Galaxy films).
The narrow streets of Venice (at night), Abu Dhabi’s new airport terminal and the desert area of Liwa, the mountains of Norway (standing in for Austria) are just some of the other international settings this action travelogue offers up.”
The dynamic squad, where spunk, fortitude, and oodles of good luck abound, are joined by artful dodger, pickpocket extraordinaire, and ambiguous ally Grace (Hayley Atwell, known to many MCU fans for her role as Peggy Carter). Nathan’s light love interest remains centered on Ilsa, but its Nathan and Grace’s relationship that is central to many of the film numerous, and quite enjoyable, set pieces. Especially a car chase in Rome where the pair end up in a bright yellow Fiat 500. Handcuffed to each other.
The narrow streets of Venice (at night), Abu Dhabi’s new airport terminal and the desert area of Liwa, the mountains of Norway (standing in for Austria) are just some of the other international settings this action travelogue offers up.
When Cruise’s character is not endlessly battling the bad guys, he’s soaring through the air (after jumping off a cliff on a motorcycle), bound for a runaway train. Or putting on any number of masks that have become the series’ trademark facial attire. Preposterous? You bet. Fun? Of course! More so because Paramount has been teasing the public with little featurettes showcasing Cruise’s determined work ethic (he and McQuarrie were also the producers) and how game he is performing the stunts himself. So, sure the film literally flies off its rails (on that train, I mean), one car at a time, with lots of derring-do to enrapture the audience, accompanied by a sidebar of giggles from the good-fellowship banter tossed about.
As far as the plot is concerned, we saw one of the same elements in the Indiana Jones film – two halves of a device that need to be combined – here it’s a key found among the human debris of a Russian nuclear submarine that has some very bad luck as the film begins. Will the combined parts help defeat the Entity and save the world? Well, there’s a reason why this film’s title ends in Part One, and you’ll have to wait until next June (and possibly later, depending on the current writer’s strike and the pending actor’s walkout), to find out. Well, you pretty much know the IMF doesn’t find defeat in its vocabulary, so it’s just a matter of how Part Two will entrance us in its winning journey.
In the meantime, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One provides plenty of enjoyable crunch for your dollar.
Elias Savada is a movie copyright researcher, critic, craft beer geek, and avid genealogist based in Bethesda, Maryland. He helps program the Spooky Movie International Movie Film Festival, and previously reviewed for Film Threat and Nitrate Online. He is an executive producer of the horror film German Angst and the documentary Nuts! He co-authored, with David J. Skal, Dark Carnival: the Secret World of Tod Browning (a revised edition will be published by Centipede Press).