After dominating the summer box office season last year with Top Gun: Maverick, Tom Cruise is back in multiplexes after a disappointing year thus far, hoping to save cinemas yet again with the seventh installment of the action franchise, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One. Although it is a lot dumber — and arguably less exciting — than the rest of the franchise, this is still one of the best times you’ll have at the movies this year.
The film follows Ethan Hunt and his IMF team as they set out on a globe-trotting adventure to stop a dangerous weapon from falling into the wrong hands. The script closely follows the formula that most of the series has followed: Hunt and his crew are disavowed by their government and go on a race against the clock to find the MacGuffin before the dubious villain gets control of it.
Dead Reckoning Part One’s stunts are never quite to the level of the past few entries, but the (comparatively) limited scale is understandable, as this film was made in the midst of the tightest of COVID restrictions. And the fact that they managed to make this movie feel as big as it does despite that fact is thoroughly impressive. However, it is frustrating that so much of the marketing is centered around the climax of the movie — Cruise’s motorcycle jump into a BASE jump. Although there are a couple more cool set pieces, that one is the biggest and best this film has to offer.
In a way, Dead Reckoning Part One almost harkens back to the earlier days of the Mission: Impossible series, where the movies thrived less in their death-defying stunts and more in being an exquisitely-paced thriller. Although the aforementioned jump will certainly stick in the minds of viewers, so too will a foot chase through an airport and a car chase involving a Fiat.
Still, despite the fact that the film doesn’t swing as big with its stunts, it manages to be equally entertaining. Even though Dead Reckoning Part One is the longest entry in the franchise, it’s exquisitely paced. The two-hour-and-forty-five-minute runtime flies by thanks to the virtually nonstop action.
That said, in another change perhaps attributable to COVID, Dead Reckoning Part One is more obviously dependent on CGI than its predecessors. Although the movie never looks bad like many Hollywood blockbusters these days, the final act in particular doesn’t feel as high-stakes as usual because it’s not quite as practical effects-heavy as usual.
There are also some bits of dialogue in the film that are among the stupidest in the series. The amount of times someone says some variation of “It knows…” about the omniscient artificial intelligence is stupefying. Another silly moment is the MacGuffin, which — in series tradition — has the potential to destroy the world, being sold for a mere $100 million. Although the Mission: Impossible scripts have always existed in service of the action, Dead Reckoning Part One feels particularly inert in this department.
With the villain effectively being an AI entity, McQuarrie and co-writer Erik Jendressen obviously have a very strong opinion about the emerging technology. Unfortunately, the movie’s understanding of AI seems heavily rooted in cliches, which causes it to immediately feel dated and making it unlikely that the story will age well.
The human villain in this film, played by Esai Morales, is much less developed than other villains in past entries. Although Morales’s performance is fittingly menacing, the character doesn’t make much sense. Throughout the movie, we get teases of his mysterious past connected to that of Hunt, but the character’s background largely feels unexplained and illogical. Perhaps there is more room to develop this in the next entry.
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One ends up being around the middle of the pack for the franchise, failing to live up to the recent heights of entries like Rogue Nation and Fallout. However, considering the circumstances in which it was made, Dead Reckoning Part One is still a ton of fun, and it sets up what will hopefully be the most epic installment yet.
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One hits theaters on July 12.
Rating: 8/10
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