Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part I - Review Thread

Mission: Impossible Chapter 7: Dead Reckoning: Part I, First Movement

The seventh(!) installment of the Mission: Impossible series should be sitting amongst a collection of box office titans this summer. Instead, it's wading through the smoldering ashes of financial disasters that in another dimension should have been money printing machines. An Indiana Jones movie, a Pixar movie, the return of Michael Keaton as Batman, the idea that all of these are huge flops is almost hard for my brain to register. Dead Reckoning Part I should be icing on the cake, not the movie that people are now looking to to save the 2023 summer box office. That shouldn't have any bearing on expectations as to the quality of the movie, it just might add a little more pressure. Pressure or no though, this latest outing is exactly what people are hoping for; ageless Tom Cruise delivering another installment of death-defying stunts and huge action set pieces. If Indiana Jones 5 had evennone sequence that was a quarter as good as anything in Dead Reckoning we would all probably be singing a different tune about it.

This go-round, Ethan is on the...well, 'hunt' for two parts of a key.  This key is part of the mystery that is the 'Entity,' an AI program that has become sentient, gone rogue and has infiltrated every level of intelligence worldwide. Anyone who possesses this key could use it to digitally control the world. Unfortunately, as this AI is self-aware it's conscious of the fact that some people like Ethan Hunt are on the move to take hold of the key and destroy the Entity. Unfortunately no one really knows how the key works, no one except Gabriel, an old nemesis of Ethan's who wants to take control of the Entity himself. As the 'Part 1' indicates, there is another installment of this story that's coming but it doesn't quite end on a cliffhanger. Instead, it ends showing a clear direction that the next movie needs to go which almost feels refreshing. Instead of walking out of the theater with a 'come on!' feeling you're left with the confidence and excitement of wondering how the team is going to do what needs to be done. The team again consists of Ethan, Ving Rhames as Luther, Simon Peggs as Benji and Rebecca Ferguson as Ilsa who all play off each other very well. Being introduced this time though is Haley Atwell as Grace who frankly is a pretty frustrating character. She first appears as a pickpocket and thief who foils Ethan for a short time but over the course of the film she is constantly being bailed out by Ethan while she leaves him in the lurch because she still doesn't quite trust him for some reason. It gets a little old and feels like some of her questionable decision making is only being used to propel the movie forward until they finally slug her into a more useful role in the third act that feels like they kind of ran out of ideas with what to do with her.

First, I'll come out and lay my biases on the table. I enjoy the Mission: Impossible movies as much as anyone but I certainly don't love them like a lot of folks do. In fact from the 4th movie onward I've only seen them once and those were when I watched them in theaters. I've never felt there was a whole lot there aside from the action which admittedly they all do expertly but when it comes to other things like character arcs or drama they always left me stale. Dead Reckoning is no different. However you like the other Christopher McQuarrie M:I movies, whether you love them like some people or are just entertained by them like me, is probably exactly how you'll feel about Dead Reckoning. This installment possesses all the tropes of other M:I movies, not just the insane stunts and high speed chases. You almost can't have a M:I movie these days without Ethan going rogue and when Ethan goes rogue you have government agents hot on his tail who only show up to screw Ethan over at the very moment he's about to win thus extending the movie by another 30 minutes. It also tries to be overly complicated when at their core the M:I movies are quite simple, they just cover the stories with crosses and double crosses and little side missions to hold your interest. This movie clocks in around 2 hours 45 minutes and while I will never begrudge a movie of its runtime you also have to earn it. Many parts of this movie felt like padding and others seemed like it was trying to confuse you just for the sake of having a twist. What's also strange about this movie too is that there is some very odd comedy that's peppered throughout that often doesn't land. There's a mildly amusing car chase in Venice that's featured in the trailer (other M:I movies have had better car chases unfortunately) and there are some comic moments that people were laughing at in the theater but left me scratching my head.  Sometimes comedy can totally deflate any tension that's trying to be maintained and I would have expected the likes of Christopher McQuarrie and Tom Cruise to have maneuvered that differently.

Mission: Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part 1 is certainly an enjoyable movie. It probably won't move the needle at all as to how you approach this franchise, like I said if you love these movies this will give you another excuse to love them and if you just enjoy them for being the entertaining popcorn movies that they are then this will also certainly meet that threshold.  I don't know if this will become anyone's favorite of the franchise but it certainly does deliver the goods that you expect in in a Mission: Impossible movie.  

B+ so says Doomsday

Theater experience note: I've long since embraced my place as an almost middle aged crotchety old timer but there's a difference between letting little things bug me as happens to old timers and enduring people who are just rude idiots. I sat next to a woman who, throughout the entire movie, basically narrated the whole thing. When someone would pull a knife she would say out loud 'oh no, they have a knife.' When the bad guys would show up she would say 'it's the bad guys.' When someone would swipe the key which happens 8,000 times in the movie she would go 'they took the key.' When subtitles would appear she would read them aloud. She was with a guy and I don't know why he didn't tell her to shut the fuck up, my only guess is because he's just as fucking stupid as she is. She didn't ruin the experience completely but she certainly didn't enhance it. Honestly, I don't go to movie theaters all that much these days but even pre-Covid I would have to endure someone like this a majority of the times I went to a theater. Again, I'm happy to laugh at my old man-ness but I don't think it's me being an old man, I've just had an ass load of rude people for a long while. I agree that the theater experience is superior to almost all others but that's only if everyone else in the theater plays ball. If they don't then it's the absolute worst.