Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One

4 outta 5

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One increases the epic scope of the Mission: Impossible series and, as the series has already been epic in scope, that’s saying something. The Mission movies are pushing about 30 years at this point (the first flick came out in ’96!) so upping the spectacle in every installment is most impressive. Reckoning may be guilty of going on a bit long and there are so many action scenes it can become an endurance test. But it is consistently entertaining with original central villain, aces action, convoluted spy craft and plot twists. For the 7^th movie in a series, it still manages to surprise.

Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is a member of the IMF, the Impossible Mission Force, a team that confronts bad guy organizations across the globe. When a Russian Nuclear Sub is destroyed, the culprit is a malicious artificial intelligence that has gained sentience known as the Entity. Hunt and his crew must find two pieces of a key that can potentially stop the Entity, but in their way is an agent of the Entity known as Gabriel (Esai Morales), a man with a tragic link to Ethan’s past. With IMF agents Benji (Simon Pegg) and Luther (Ving Rhames) at his side, Ethan finds an exceptional thief named Grace (Halley Atwell) that can lead to the keys. Also involved are a government agent and Hunt’s old nemesis, Kittridge (Henry Czerny), and Hunt’s former flame the independent operator, Ilsa (Rebecca Furguson). With black market arms dealer known as the White Widow (Vanessa Kirby) trying to sell the keys, the chase may lead to doom for the world.

The central villain of the film, the malicious Entity AI that has gained sentience, sort of pushes the Impossible series into sci-fi territory. But the last three movies had villains that wanted to cause a global apocalypse and restart humanity, so the series was due for a change up. The Entity doesn’t have any sort of definable personality, it’s just kind of a menacing ball of light that infiltrates data networks and then leaves, making its ultimate goal unknowable. The Entity’s otherness is especially pronounced when there’s a convoluted scheme for it to learn about Benji’s personality and then later it imitates Benji on the comms to mislead Ethan. The personification of the Entity is Gabriel, and a few shadowy flashbacks imply that he was involved in the death of a loved one during young Ethan’s life. As this is a two-part film, their backstory isn’t fully elaborated. Morales’ performance as Gabriel seems off-putting and inhuman, making him feel like a willing puppet of the Entity.

There are lots of characters here, some underserved by the scope of the film. A subplot about crusty old agent Briggs (Shea Whigham) trying to take down Hunt seems a bit like filler. But it is awesome to see Czerny’s Kittridge back as he was the one pursuing Hunt back in the first Mission: Impossible movie in 1996, so their interactions have a sense of heft as Czerny looks perpetually ticked off. Atwell’s thief seems like a replacement for the mostly absent Ilsa but Atwell acquits herself well with funny moments in contrast to the sometimes dour Ilsa. When Grace escapes in a car she is terrible at high-speed chases which is a fun contrast to the usually hyper-competent crooks, leading to a frantic chase with Ethan and Grace handcuffed together. Pom Klementieff is a mostly silent assassin with nicely crazed emoting. There’s a lack of Ilsa here, although Furguson makes the most of it. Whenever Kirby’s arms dealer shows up, she seems like she’s dissecting her prey with a lacerating look. There’s some trademark Mission: Impossible face swapping which lets Kirby play someone else and she conveys the difference between her characters.

Cruise’s Hunt is still the hyper-competent lead character, and he seems even more determined to take out the Entity and Gabriel. There’s also bringing back Hunt’s sleight of hand tricks from the ’96 Mission: Impossible which is a character trait that has been forgotten in the last few decades but there’s good usage of sleight of hand trickery here. Cruise has some funny reactions as even Hunt can’t believe the feats of impossible he has to regularly do. A selling point of the Mission: Impossible movies has been seeing Cruise engage in increasingly crazy stunts and there’s a jump off a ledge that looks spectacular. There are punchy bits like a sandstorm shootout and the finale features a collapsing train hanging off a ledge that is quite thrilling. There are tense moments of things going extremely wrong like an airport scene where agents are searching for Ethan as he tries to nab the key. This takes place while Benji and Luther are dealing with the Entity’s making Benji undergo a psychological examination featuring riddles and a potential nuclear explosion. The movie sometimes can feel like a constant string of set-pieces but they’re all engaging.

As implied by the title, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One does end on a cliffhanger, but not an annoying one. Events are resolved making it a satisfying singular experience but teasing out potential for an even crazier second movie. As Hunt can’t see the AI Entity face to face it makes for a truly impossible, but entertaining, mission.