They should call it Mission: Exceptional. Given that this is a series that began on television 57 years ago and over the past 27 years has delivered seven big feature films, no one would be terribly surprised if it were to begin flagging a bit. But Tom Cruise & Co. will have none of that; to the contrary, this new entry, officially called Dead Reckoning Part One, ramps up the excitement and sheer flat-out impressiveness to a new level, with the absolute final piece of the puzzle already shot and due to open in a year’s time.
Few films have come into existence that display so much confidence and conviction in what they’re doing and can follow through with their ideas onscreen virtually without regard to budgetary constraints. To put things in perspective, the normal budget for a one-hour episode of M:I on television in the late 1960s was $225,000, which was on the high side for the time. Paramount’s final two installments of its film franchise, meanwhile, have a staggering combined budget of around $600 million. But no one seems to be sweating it, since the projected box office take for the climactic double-bill is something like $3.5 billion, enough to keep several small countries afloat for some time. There’s never been a cinematic phenomenon quite like this before.
Even though every manifestation of M:I has been successful on its own terms, the franchise has been boosted to literal and heretofore unimagined heights by the involvement, since 1996, of Cruise, whose personal investment in the meaning of the title hardly seems limited to the financial rewards. There could be personal reasons involving ego, the competitive spirit and so on, but behind it all one feels the star’s need to tackle a difficult new challenge, to up the ante, to take something as far as he can, to press the limits and set a new standard.
Certainly this applies to the hair-raising sequence, a portion of which has already been on TV for a while, of Cruise speeding his motorcycle off a mountain cliff and only opening his parachute at the last second. Even if you’ve already seen it online or on the tube, it’s something else altogether to behold the complete sequence on the big screen; talk about something you’ve never seen before. What was the insurance policy like on this stunt? It might be recalled that the series’ creator, Bruce Geller, died piloting his own plane in a crash near Santa Barbara in 1978.
But nothing seems to hold Cruise back; when he’s committed he’s all in, and this attitude seems to be contagious for everyone on the entire crew, in front of or behind the camera. The by-product of this is that everything is taken to the limit, whether it’s the decision to play long ball, the inspired choices of locations, the compulsion to top what you’ve done before and to refresh and renew old ingredients with new flavors. Perhaps, when you’re fortunate enough to be part of a franchise that’s always been successful and you know by now what works and what doesn’t, it’s somewhat easier to move ahead with confidence. But we’ve seen enough revamping, updating and attempted rehabilitating of old properties to know that failure is always lurking nearby, that it takes a lot of attention for well-worn properties to maintain their luster. But the team here avoids all the potential traps and missteps and, despite the familiarity of the format, pretty much everything here feels fresh, alluring and a pleasure to revisit.
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What everyone seeing the film will behold for the first time is the spectacular new Midfield Terminal Building at the Abu Dhabi airport long before it officially opened. The structure is almost distractingly striking, but it’s here that the seed is planted that will drive the narrative for the 163 minutes of entirely involving action, suspense and flat-out fun.
As in many mystery and suspense films, the motivating action here stems from a MacGuffin, a term coined by the British screenwriter Angus MacPhail and made famous by Alfred Hitchcock. The trigger for the film’s events can be innocuous in and of itself, but functions to set all the gears in motion. Here, it’s a small orb held by a mysterious man at the airport who, if he can obtain the matching second one, will have the power to trigger devastation of unthinkable magnitude.
Think what you may of such a corny old advice, but it’s enough to get things rolling, especially when the usual M:I suspects begin materializing and get the fun stuff rolling. Rejoining Cruise’s Ethan Hunt, albeit with variable amounts of to do, are Ving Rhames’ hacker/tech genius Luther Stickell; Henry Czerny’s Eugene Kitteridge, who’s now director of the CIA; Simon Pegg back again as tech genius Benjamin Dunn; and Rebecca Ferguson as MI6 agent Ilsa Faust, who previously appeared in Rogue Nation and Fallout. And then there’s franchise newcomer Hayley Atwell as Grace, a force of nature who’s impossible to pin down and is known to play a significant role in the final installment, as well as Vanessa Kirby. The women here are sharp, proactive and intriguing, hardly the sort of tag-along women who generally populated male-oriented action films in the past.
Many films of this type have motivations that feature nominal or arbitrary twists and turns that have more to do with what will make good scenes than how much sense they make, and such is certainly the case here. After a certain point, you begin to minimize or simply ignore real-life logic in favor of savoring the vibrant and beguiling cast as well as the exceptional settings and often amazing predicaments in which the characters have been placed by the imaginative writers. It should be remembered that the three young unknown writers who came up with the characters and format for the Mission: Impossible movies in the first place and have all enjoyed long and exceptional careers since then are David Koepp, Robert Towne and Steven Zaillian.
Although numerous voluptuous European settings help augment the tony pedigree of the entire undertaking, a significant part of the film is set in Italy, specifically in Venice and Rome. The latter really gets a heavy workout as hot cars take to the streets, often in very rough ways, and you get an uneasy feeling that some sort of assault on the ancient city is on the way.
The climactic bike flight is part of a rugged and notably cinematic climactic train journey on what’s meant to be the Orient Express, a sequence that, like so much else in the film, is familiar in its essential components but is pushed to an unprecedented degree of risk. Makers of spectacle and adventure films mostly feel the need to come up with something new to top anything that’s come before, and the creative team here has done that and more.
This is a serious, sharp-minded and top-tier action film by any standard, and many fans will no doubt mollify themselves by seeing it more than once before Part Two opens a year from now. This is Hollywood action filmmaking at its peak.
Title: Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One
Distributor: Paramount
Release date: July 12, 2023
Director: Christopher McQuarrie
Screenwriters: Christopher McQuarrie & Erik Jendresen
Cast: Tom Cruise, Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Vanessa Kirby, Esai Morales, Pom Klementieff, Mariela Garriga, Henry Czerny, Shea Whigham, Greg Tarzan Davis, Charles Parnell, Frederick Schmidt, Cary Elwes, Mark Gatiss, Indira Varma, Rob Delaney
Rating: PG-13
Running time: 2 hr 43 min