Review: Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1

Director:  Christopher McQuarrie

Stars:  Hayley Atwell, Tom Cruise, Pom Klementieff

Six years ago, action spectacle John Wick Chapter Two opened with images of Buster Keaton’s dynamic railway dash from Sherlock, Jr. projected on the side of a building. Chad Stahelski and his team tipping the hat to one of the original masters of stunt work and action cinema. Here, in the seventh Mission: Impossible film, Tom Cruise and Christopher McQuarrie do one better, recreating perhaps Keaton’s most infamous stunt in an exhilarating and elaborately staged homage to The General. It’s been very nearly 100 years since Keaton ploughed a real train off the tracks for his celebrated masterpiece. Cruise and McQuarrie not only appreciate this, but they want to take the baton for the next 100.

Will Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1 be remembered in the same way? It’s unlikely. But, in the here and now, that doesn’t stop it from providing a riot of espionage silliness and sci-fi hokum to get swept up in. It’s been five long years since Fallout provided an unexpected series high for this franchise, a franchise that feels as though it’s been keeping itself afloat on Cruise’s penchant for daredevil stunts alone. Dead Reckoning sees M:I shift into Roger Moore-era Bond shenanigans, while cleaving surprisingly close to the template of the more recent Fast & Furious episodes, particularly this year’s Fast X. Even more unexpectedly, there’s a fair dose of Lord of the Rings in there, as well as a lot of close-up magic.

It begins small, if you can consider a Russian submarine sinking after being fooled into firing on itself small. Ethan Hunt (Cruise) in the shadows. A tape. A new mission, should he choose to accept it. He always accepts it. Dead Reckoning taps into our fears of AI by making the villain of the piece an amorphous ‘Entity’. A Sauron-esque digital eye (or possibly anus) that’s grown rogue and sentient in The Cloud. The only way to harness or destroy it is with a physical key that’s been split in two. But everyone’s intelligence agencies want those halves. This time it might just be Ethan vs. the world.

The subject of AI takeover raises real-world fears of the reduction of or, more pointedly, the illusion of choice at both micro and macro levels. For individuals left with fewer alternatives navigating day to day life, to whole nations being manoeuvred and manipulated. Dead Reckoning feels reactive to the news cycles and social feeds of the so-called “post truth” era, where we’re often deceived by doctored images, hearsay and rewritten histories.

The illusion of choice manifests elsewhere as a counterpoint to this. Dead Reckoning forefronts the oath that its shadow men and women take on joining the IMF. The choice to dedicate themselves to the cause. But by the end it is highlighted that – in all their cases – it’s seemingly been no choice at all. When it’s death, jail or the mission, the mission is all there is. It can be likened, then, to Morpheus offering Neo the option to discover the truth about The Matrix (a staple of storytelling ready to be mocked by the forthcoming Barbie). A formal invitation to a foregone conclusion. This sense of destiny or fate is further echoed in the algorithmic predictions of ‘the Entity’, which assesses all variables at lightning speed, essentially mapping the future. Our heroes can only struggle against this sense of predestination.

Will they make it? You’ll have to wait until Part Two of course, but, as we’ve learned in the past, they probably will. The question, this late in the game, is at what cost?

Cruise is as you’d expect. Charming. A bit unhinged. Dashing across the globe hellbent on saving cinema by throwing himself in front of death at every opportunity. His valiant efforts to shoulder the future of blockbuster entertainment make Ethan Hunt’s battle against an algorithm feel almost meta. Dead Reckoning‘s story embraces the retro-fit. Getting back to basics. Doing it the hard way. Reducing your digital footprint. Dead Reckoning still has VFX shots everywhere. It needs them. But unlike the conspicuous CG soup that surrounded much of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (for instance), one senses the more earthen physicality of the action sequences here. The grit and energy. The Keatonness, if you will.

The old gang’s all here of course (Simon Pegg’s Benji is markedly less irritating and Vanessa Kirby gets quite a bit to do later on), but the additions also prove welcome. Swept up in the mix is Hayley Atwell’s light-fingered Grace; a pickpocket who becomes Ethan’s best chance of getting his hands on the film’s token MacGuffin. Atwell provides a smart point of tension for Ethan’s romance with Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson), and the film is in safe hands when either one of them is centred.

Elsewhere, Pom Klementieff (giving mad Robert Pattinson vibes) seems to be relishing the opportunity to play unhinged heavy Paris, and she visibly tears up the screen with unbridled intensity. Must be nice not playing a stupid bug lady for a change.

In spite of some duff dialogue exchanges (portentous waffle about dark messiahs can get in the bin) and a rather underdeveloped human villain in the form of Esai Morales’ suave yet robotic Gabriel, Dead Reckoning Part 1 is mostly breathless; no mean feat given its ungainly 2hr 43min running time. Indeed, when the action gets in a rhythm – as on a Venice bridge or aboard the Orient Express in the extended finale – it approaches the balletic. Here Cruise and his cohorts fulfil their mission to get the endorphins flowing with sequences that belt along like, well, a runaway train.

As this utterly unique A-list superstar hurtles himself toward the infinite for our amusement – a self-ascribed avatar for the act of cinema-going itself – we can only marvel at his out-sized craziness for doing so. His generosity and largess. And the promise of more to come is one destiny well-worth investment.

Here’s hoping his isn’t a mission: impossible.