"Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One" - Film Review
This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One being covered here wouldn’t exist.
The main villain of Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One is also the chief adversary in the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes: artificial intelligence. In Dead Reckoning, an AI program known as The Entity has gone rogue and poses a threat to all of humanity. The Entity has achieved sentience and hacked into all the intelligence agencies around the world. Its program can only be operated with a key that’s split into two parts. Major countries have hired their own top-tier spies and thieves to find both halves of the key so they can control the power of The Entity. That’s where Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his IMF team (Simon Pegg & Ving Rhames) come in. Ethan believes no one person should have the power of The Entity and wants to destroy the key before it falls into the wrong hands.
Does the plot even really matter in a film like Dead Reckoning? It’s flimsy at best and falls apart pretty quickly when you think about it, but who is tuning into the newest Mission: Impossible looking for a heady, thought-provoking plot? The audience is there to watch Ethan fling himself and a motorcycle off a mountain and crash through the side of a moving train. And he does that. Ethan also hurtles a Fiat down all 135 of Rome’s Spanish Steps (they date back to the 18th century), climbs vertically up a train that’s falling into a ravine, and gets in more fights than you can count.
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Dead Reckoning can’t exist on stunts alone, but Cruise isn’t capable of delivering any sort of meaningful emotion. At a low point in the film, he can’t even muster a tear. Just a solemn, empty expression as he looks out across the Venice skyline. This lackluster performance is in direct opposition to that of newcomer to the Mission: Impossible franchise, Hayley Atwell, as Grace. She’s a pickpocket whose path crosses Ethan’s because she has one half of The Entity’s key. Atwell is wildly charismatic, breathing life into Cruise’s stilted performance. Their dynamic actually manages to sporadically loosen up Cruise. Even though he’s not the most expressive actor, Cruise has managed to surround himself with exciting performers. Rebecca Ferguson, Vanessa Kirby, Pom Klementieff, and Esai Morales are the main supporting cast members and seem to relish this playground Mission: Impossible has created for them. You have simply never seen someone drive through Venice in a massive humvee as gleefully and maniacally as Klementieff.
Dead Reckoning is as advertised. A bombastic summer blockbuster that will put butts in seats, but will likely be forgotten before Dead Reckoning Part Two reaches theatres. Audiences will have to remind themselves who made it out of Part One alive, what The Entity is capable of, and where we last left Ethan. The lack of a lasting impression will matter to some audience members more than others, but one thing cannot be denied: Ethan stuck the motorcycle-leap-off-the-mountain landing.
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