Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his Impossible Mission Force are after “The Entity”, a state-of-the-art, nefarious, self-aware AI technology that specializes in fake news and misinformation. The team needs two halves of a key that will unlock a mystery buried below the Artic ice. During their mission, a pickpocket (Haley Atwell) steals the key, which complicates matters. Of course, the key is not valuable unless you know what it unlocks, so Hunt grudgingly makes her a part of the team in order to track down its matching lock.
Dead Reckoning: Part One offers a pretty good mix of grounded suspense, old-fashioned espionage, and bombastic action sequences. The airport scene is reminiscent of a Hitchcock thriller, the humorous chase using Cruise’s “other” car is a lot of fun, and the close quarters hand to hand fights are well choreographed. Oh, and of course, we also get lots of scenes of Tom Cruise running. Although some action sequences are just variations on what we’ve seen in the franchise before (there are scenes involving trains, motorcycles, mountains, etc.), the tweaks are clever enough to make it feel somewhat fresh. The finale in particular, is a real nail-biter and owes as much to the original Mission: Impossible as it does to Buster Keaton.
Returning director Christopher McQuarrie delivers another solidly entertaining entry. He doesn’t have a signature style like past Mission: Impossible auteurs such as Brian DePalma or John Woo, but he knows how to keep the franchise moving like a well-oiled machine. The cast of returning members, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, and Rebecca Ferguson lend fine support, and newcomers like Atwell, Pom Klementieff, and Shea Whigham are all up to the challenge. Only Esai Morales as the villain is kind of one note, mostly because he’s the human ambassador for the evil AI. Maybe they’re just saving him for later and he’ll have something meatier to do in Part 2.
One odd thing to note: The title sequence doesn’t occur until a half-hour into the film, which might be some kind of record. Then again, if this is a two-parter (the third two-parter of 2023 after Fast X and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse), then I guess thirty minutes into a five-hour film isn’t that bad. Fortunately, it ends with a fairly definite ending, nicely setting up Part Two without resorting to an unnecessary cliffhanger. I’ll be sure to accept that Mission when it comes out.
There is another film I can think of where the title sequence did not occur until 30 minutes into the movie-the 80s action classic Trident Force.
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