Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part 1 has Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and our team dealing with the most significant threat they have ever faced. Ethan is now with just his stalwart teammates here – Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames) and Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg) as they face an existential foe and crisis, a sentient Artificial General Intelligence. Hunt now must search the world for the most wonderfully thought of MacGuffin while staying ahead of basically the entire world. The crux of the movie is that it’s possible that only Ethan Hunt can be trusted with gaining this power because he’s the only one who knows that no one should have it. It’s also about how Hunt, after 27 years of crafting a family through his team versus having a personal, separate life over the years, can choose the world over his family/team. Of course, he rejects these things and pushes forward because someone has to. Rebecca Ferguson returns as Ilsa Faust, the Hunt’s real equal in the world and his spy soulmate. Ferguson continues her cool performance as the love interest and partner in crime to Cruise’s Hunt on the screen. This film dials down to Hunt’s core folks and works in many ways as a call back all the way to the first Mission Impossible film.
See, in that film, Hunt loses everyone and everything close to him besides his work, and over time especially in the first three, the only real stabilizing force has been Rhames’ Luther. After all these years with Luther and Benji here, along with Ilsa Ethan, he has a real core people again, and if you’ve really paid attention, you can see this as one of his main battles in dealing with this threat. For me, this is really driven home by the returning Henry Czerny as Eugene Kittridge, the head of the IMF from the first film. The real standout in this film is Hayley Atwell as Grace, a thief who ends up in this vast world-spanning event that they didn’t plan for. My feelings on her in this movie is it felt like Tom Cruise saw how Atwell was great, but Disney/Marvel or Hollywood, in general, gave her that real big shot and was like, he you go, I’m going to put you on the next level. She’s her usual charming and beautiful self on film and is never overpowered by Cruise’s immense Hollywood star charisma and screen presence. At times they are put together in very screwball comedy-like interactions while huge set pieces are happening concurrently, and they are able to keep the focus on them completely. I enjoyed her character on screen.
Do you know who else really surprised me? Pom Klementieff as Paris is the heavy for the main bad guy (more on him later) that you think from the posters, “Oh look, they have this Asian woman with facepaint on trying to look cool. I bet she dies quickly.” NOPE! She is mostly silent, but I didn’t even recognize the actress in the role. She was damn near the Terminator in this film, constantly coming and attacking. She does great work with her eyes and body language. Looks great doing the action and the fight scenes—just a joy to see. Now the big bad guy, Gabriel, played by Esai Morales, perfectly fits this world yet also is the closest we’ve seen that feels like someone a superhero would face. His calm and unyielding nature – he comes across like Death itself in this. He’s the unmovable object that the unstoppable force that is Hunt must contend with. He’s already one of my favorite villains in this franchise because he just feels more memorable. Shea Whigham does a great Tommy Lee Jones as Jasper Briggs, who’s chasing Hunt because, of course, Hunt has gone rogue like he’s done in just every single one of these films. He’s funny but sincere; the character isn’t a comedy role; it’s just he gets constantly outwitted. He’s like Inspector Zenigata in Lupin the 3rd for the anime fans out there that get this reference.
Now I have to get into the action and the set pieces. It’s nonstop, and of course, this man Cruise is completely and utterly has no care for his life with the stunts he’s doing in this film. On top of that, what’s impressive is how much you can tell this was done in real life with real effects and stunts. There is a chase in this film that literally had me feeling like Cruise is taking a shot at Vin Diesel like – I’mma show how to do this, son. This movie has real rap battle energy. There are things in this movie that you’ve seen in other recent movies, and it’s just done so much better than everyone else. From how it’s placed in the film, to how it looks, to just how much the stakes feel so much higher and fulfilling when that part is over. This film left me in awe at times, and that’s something that’s very hard for me to feel of late. I can’t get over the car chases, train scenes, and fights. All work, and it’s not just the dirt bike jump they’ve shown over and over again that’s there. This film has great surprises throughout the runtime. So much so that I didn’t even feel the run time in this movie; this film was beyond amazing in the Dolby Cinema theaters because of the sound mix. This joint had me moving in my seat (also, rumble seats kinda crazy). Tom Cruise and Christopher McQuarrie have raised the bar for big action movies here. They want people to leave their houses to see an experience, and they deliver on all fronts—top-tier entertainment.
Score: A
(P.S. They have a trailer of Tom Cruise just running; also, they have a big scene where he’s just running. They know what it is – the more he runs, the more fire it will be. It never fails)
RIOTUS 