MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – DEAD RECKONING PART ONE

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, Paramount Pictures

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Review by Mark Dujsik | July 9, 2023

The biggest surprise of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One is to discover that this series, which began in 1996 and found new life with a focus on action and practical stunts in its fourth installment, still possesses enough ideas to justify its continued existence. In fact, this seventh film ranks among the series' best installments, even though it's more or less recycling/repurposing setpieces we've already seen—either in this franchise or action/spy movies in general—and isn't technically a complete story.

This film's narrative conclusion will come later (about a year from now) in yet another entry. It's difficult to tell whether we should be worried that this one has exasperated whatever steam the series' engine might have left or excitedly anticipate what the filmmakers have left for the tale's finale.

That's to discover another day, though, and in the meantime, co-writer/director Christopher McQuarrie has distilled the best of what this series has had to offer over the decades into a clever and thrilling mix of espionage, action, and character focus, while also bringing a few new conceits into play. It's really quite something to behold and experience, especially when the film is doing what this franchise has come to do better than likely any other movies out there.

The first of the new ideas, introduced in a nifty and mysterious prologue (arguably the most appropriate kind of prologue for a story like this) aboard a top-secret Russian submarine submerged in the Arctic, is this entry's villain. Bypassing the usual archetype of a murderous terrorist/arms dealer/double agent/whoever entirely, the concept of this enemy jumps straight into the biggest promises/threats of the modern day.

It's an artificial intelligence, capable of analyzing every piece of information in the internet-reliant world and making eerily accurate prediction of what any government, organization, or individual will do based on the data it's always collecting. If such a thing sounds silly, that's fine. Surely, all the algorithms tracking our every move online and in the real world will one day appreciate, to the extent that cold coding can, such naïveté.

It's a constant threat, in other words, existing everywhere and nowhere, as Impossible Mission Force agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) learns after sneaking into a clandestine meeting of the heads of every branch of the United States' intelligence apparatus. How he pulls that off, confronts his old foe and current boss Kittridge (Henry Czerny), and manages to escape from such a secure location would seem to be the setup for a fine, sneaky sequence. Here, it's just exposition featuring some craftily constructed surprises, because the filmmakers have so much else in store.

It's tempting to simply list and vaguely describe those other sequences. In fact, it's too tempting.

A lot of this film, co-written by McQuarrie and Erik Jendresen, feels as if it's getting back to the series' roots as a spy thriller, after most of the recent installments gave us some routine plotting to excuse a string of—admittedly exceptional—action scenes. Tellingly, the first big setpiece here isn't about action, basically throwing us into Ethan's attempt to find a key—a literal one—that will unlock the source of the omniscient, omnipotent AI, known as "the Entity." While various countries and state players and rogue entities want the Entity for their own ends, Ethan is convinced it needs to be destroyed, lest any one nation, organization, or person hold that much power.

That means he and his team—including Benji (Simon Pegg) and Luther (Ving Rhames)—have to track down the second half of the key (Part of the extended preamble has Ethan obtaining the first half from Rebecca Ferguson's Ilsa). The result is an elaborate cat-and-mouse game in Abu Dhabi International Airport, featuring tactics as newfangled as augmented reality glasses, as well as on-the-fly video editing, and as old-fashioned as sleight-of-hand, as well as foot chases and a race against the ticking clock of a riddle-based bomb. The sequence is orchestrated with inspired, clockwork precision, while also introducing us to a few new characters.

Some are ancillary villains, namely Pom Klementieff's deadly assassin Paris and Esai Morales' enigmatic Gabriel, who has a history with Ethan and is using/being used by the Entity for its uncertain goals. Another is Shea Whigham's Jasper, an IMF agent tasked by Kittridge to find the once-again rogue Ethan, and finally, there's Grace (Hayley Atwell), an expert thief who was hired by an anonymous client to steal the key piece.

She also figures into the film's most giddily executed centerpiece, a car chase through the streets of Rome that comes across as if McQuarrie wants to kill the entire concept of the movie car chase by way of fine-tuning, expanding, and attempting to perfect it. With the sequence's multiple layers and many vehicles and evolving stakes, it's difficult to imagine anyone coming close to matching—let alone topping—the dizzying mix of relative realism (Grace is definitely not prepared to participate in such an endeavor), controlled chaos, and self-aware humor (A comic beat involving a rolling car and its occupants is absurd, hilarious, and changes the dynamic of the chase again) on display here anytime soon.

The rest of the plot, obviously, has Ethan and his team tracking the key's halves to various locations in the hands of assorted players. If it sounds routine, the plotting mostly is, but the continual threat of the Entity and the feeling that our man might have finally met his match elevate it in a sinister and defeated way (Cruise adds a noticeable layer of weariness to the Ethan's determination to save everyone no matter the cost for himself). That atmosphere is palpable during a standoff at a club in Venice that transforms into a chase through the city, with McQuarrie tapping into film noir aesthetics to highlight the desperation.

As if all of this isn't enough, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One climaxes with yet another phenomenal, layered setpiece. It involves spy games on the Orient Express, a motorcycle chasing a train, a leap of faith that's doubly breathtaking because Cruise makes it obvious that he continues to do his own stunts, a fight atop a speeding train as an homage to the first installment, and a string of cliffhangers that, since one segment of it takes place in a particular compartment of the train, must even throw a kitchen sink into the mix. This is an absurdly entertaining film.

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