Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning part one

 

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning part one

Director ~ Christopher McQuarrie

Writers ~ Bruce Geller, Christopher McQuarrie, Erik Jendresen

2023, US

Stars ~ Tom Cruise, Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames

 

Definitely: I Came For The Action – and to that end, the narrative technique serves well, being some exposition for a moment and then extended action sequences. It’s a long film but never quite outstays its welcome, zipping around from a desert to tourist attraction to tourist attraction and stacking up action set pieces more than backstory (yeh yes, bad guy; misguided good guy; femme fatale; dodgy guy; Vienna! Rome! etc). Tom Cruise just wants to do stunts. Simon Pegg throws a little light relief being the panicky one. Ving Rhames will bring the sat-behind-a-screen gravitas and any deux ex machina necessary.

 

It’s a world seemingly populated by photoshop characters – a bunch of fashion shoots set against each other – although Rebecca Ferguson does have that pinched expression that looks like she might cry at any minute, despite being kickass. She’s making way for the repentant femme fatale pickpocket Hayley Atwell for some battle-of-the-sexes one-upmanship flirtation interludes. Some call-backs to previous franchise entries reaches for some over-arching import, and implies a rounding-up, but I don’t think I have seen them all and, anyway, it’s only the action I came for. And however tropey all else is, it delivers on that. You know, desert storming, train-top fights, car chases on ancient stairs that don't look like they could take it...

 

 

The opening gambit where the subtitles segue into accents struck me as a somewhat neat trick to address an obvious pending criticism. That the enemy is AI is like the franchise trying to go against its own ridiculousness, giving it magic powers that only running humans around and analogue stunts can overcome. To that end, the final train set piece is fully worth the price of admission, and states that the franchise still places its chips on stunt work and action tropes, however CGI augmented.