Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, 2023.
Directed by Christopher McQuarrie.
Starring Tom Cruise, Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Vanessa Kirby, Henry Czerny, Esai Morales, Pom Klementieff, Cary Elwes, Shea Whigham, Mariela Garriga, Greg Tarzan Davis, Charles Parnell, Rob Delaney, Indira Varma, Mark Gatiss, Anton Valensi, Nico Toffoli, and Frederick Schmidt.
SYNOPSIS:
Ethan Hunt and his IMF team must track down a dangerous weapon before it falls into the wrong hands.
In an espionage world where digital gadgets are often an agent’s greatest assets, co-writer/director Christopher McQuarrie’s Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (scribed alongside Erik Jendresen, loosely based on the TV show by Bruce Geller) asks what happens when such tools can no longer be trusted. There’s a point where Tom Cruise’s IMF (Impossible Mission Force) agent Ethan Hunt is in hot pursuit (complete with the seemingly obligatory shots of Tom Cruise running at lightning speed across visually arresting settings) of terrorist Gabriel (a mysterious, ominously intimidating Esai Morales), where an unknown force dubbed The Entity starts hacking into friend, partner, and tech field agent Benji Dunn’s (a returning Simon Pegg) electronics, mimicking his voice to deliver incorrect and misleading navigational directions, entirely cutting off the real Benji from communication.
The obvious parallel is our real-life digital age, where society practically depends on the Internet and social media for information and connection. An extended segment of technobabble describes The Entity as a sentient ghostly enemy that can tap into any database from any country or the Internet to rewrite history (if I’m following along correctly). It’s Mission: Impossible crossed with a Hideo Kojima Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty style treatise on the dangers of technology and the rise of AI fascination, with the usual death-defying stunts from Tom Cruise at the forefront.
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One is also releasing during an uncertain time in the cinematic landscape where, with each passing blockbuster, more and more filmmakers and studios come across inclined to continuously strip away practical effects in favor of excessive amounts of CGI, oftentimes unconvincingly replicating entire locales with green screen. Some franchises have taken this one unsettling step further by de-aging actors to prey on nostalgia or using CGI to resurrect dead actors, in turn raising numerous legitimate moral concerns.
However, despite going into production years ago and suffering multiple pandemic-related delays, the release couldn’t be more timely, coming at a time of even greater uncertainty during multiple industry strikes, leaving studios content to start using AI to write screenplays. Not even a week ago (at the time of this writing), it was revealed that the opening credits sequence to Marvel’s Secret Invasion was created using AI art design.
This is relevant information when considering that Tom Cruise is one of Hollywood’s only bankable, mainstream household-name stars. He cares about preserving the sanctity of blockbusters and the theatrical experience itself, determined not to let that flame die out. Judging from the astronomical box office total of last year’s Top Gun: Maverick, a film that became a must-see theatrical experience partially due to the commitment to doing the action and flying for real, his mission has so far been a success. Time will tell if he can accomplish the same lofty feat with Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One.
One would hope so as the action here is, somehow, even more insane, but also serves to further recruit troops in not just a pushback against excessive use of CGI in movies (which most of the time doesn’t look good or lessens the impact of what’s transpiring on screen), but digital technology and AI itself. Digital gadgets will not help Ethan Hunt save the day this time; his teammates and friends (in addition to Simon Pegg’s Benji, Rebecca Ferguson’s former MI6 agent Ilsa Faust returns, as does series veteran Ving Rhames as computer tech Luther Stickell, and for the first time since the original 1996 Mission: Impossible directed by Brian De Palma, Henry Czerny as once upon a time IMF director Eugene Kittridge) will.
Some new characters also enter the fray, such as highly-skilled pickpocketer Grace (a magnetic Hayley Atwell, matching Tom Cruise in energy across action and playful back-and-forth dialogue exchanges seeking leverage over one another), a silent assassin played by Pom Klementieff, and a team of enforcers led by Shea Whigham’s Jasper Briggs tasked with stopping Ethan Hunt (they serve as comic relief more than anything since they are consistently one step behind his efforts, although there are seeds planted for a bigger role in Part Two).
There is also the sense that Tom Cruise knows he can’t be this blockbuster savior (regarding quality in box office returns) forever; Top Gun: Maverick also recently dabbled in mortality. However, he knows (working with an excellent filmmaking team on the same wavelength) he can start the fight now and has done so here with the first half of something tremendous with promise for more greatness. Considering that this is “Part One,” The Entity doesn’t feel fully defined, with exposition raising just as many questions as it offers answers. Rushed storytelling doesn’t help, but the narrative’s message is clear.
Bluntly speaking, those minor quibbles are forgivable when a film has spectacular, bar-raising action sequences such as this, further accentuated by palpable urgency and freight train narrative thrust. Movies might not be for you if you don’t feel an enormous rush of excitement by the time Tom Cruise is riding a motorbike off a cliff in the Austrian Alps, parachuting his way down onto a train (which eventually comes to feel like a large-scale redo of the original film’s climax, but fittingly more epic and thrilling). These set pieces are also elevated by a returning Lauren Balfe’s booming score and the classic adrenaline-pumping theme by Lalo Schifrin.
During these marvelous action sequences (made more immersive through realistic soundscapes such as Tom Cruise freefalling after riding a bike off a cliff, with the wind crashing against his face), Ethan Hunt and company are racing against the aforementioned terrorist Gabriel (who happens to know an awful lot about The Entity) to acquire both halves of a pendant-shaped key, which, once they figure out what it unlocks and where it could be used to control the AI force, shaping the world and history as they see fit. This also means practically every country is searching for these keys as a means to global domination, with Vanessa Kirby returning as black arms dealer White Widow hoping to broker the deal.
The only thing the heroes of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One can trust, and the only thing that is real, are the conversations they have amongst themselves in person or the ways in which they set aside their own lives to save one another, progressively avoiding digital technology whenever the opportunity arises. Similarly, finding new ways to utilize CGI, AI scripts, or bringing actors back from the dead will not save Hollywood from box office struggles; they will continue to strip cinema of its soul. It’s rare that something so exhilarating and heart-stopping is, in some ways, also one of the most important films in recent memory. Rage, rage against AI, and do not go gentle into that good night Tom Cruise.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Association. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews, follow my Twitter or Letterboxd, or email me at MetalGearSolid719@gmail.com
