This review was written during the 2023 Writer's Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA strikes. This motion picture wouldn't have been possible without the efforts of unionized artists who deserve fair liveable wages.
It may be the seventh entry in the Mission: Impossible series, but Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning (Part One) feels like a breath of fresh air compared to the last month of summer blockbusters. Placed next to the rudimentary Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, the unbearable The Flash, and the stunningly inert Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, the most basic elements of Dead Reckoning seem like revelations. Even its way of referencing other earlier installments in this saga is masterful compared to other 2023 blockbusters. Dial of Destiny just delivered an adolescent rehash of Short Round and The Flash paused its plot for CG cameos from older DC superheroes. By contrast, Dead Reckoning harkens back to the very first Mission: Impossible simply by mimicking how that feature cut to brief bursts of often silent flashbacks. If you understand the visual symmetry at play, you'll get a nifty reference. If not, the flashbacks still work on their own terms. That's how you do it.
What is Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) up to this time? Well, Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning (Part One) catches up with our hero contending with a new enemy rooted in the modern world. An A.I. system known as The Entity is growing more and more powerful. Rather than destroy this omnipresent entity, the world's governments, including the United States of America, merely want to control The Entity. Hunt must go rogue with allies Benji (Simon Pegg), Ilsa (Rebecca Ferguson), and Luther (Ving Rhames) to stop The Entity and its most devoted followers, like the malicious Gabriel (Esai Morales). A wild card in all this mayhem is pickpocket Grace (Hayley Atwell), who ends up being stuck at Hunt's side as she gets roped into all this world-threatening chaos.
Writer/director Christopher McQuarrie returns for his third Mission: Impossible assignment on Dead Reckoning (Part One), partially because he did such a good job helming the last two installments in this series and also because Tom Cruise apparently can no longer take on an acting gig unless McQuarrie is involved in the production in some capacity. This particular entry isn't quite up to par with McQuarrie's earlier directorial efforts in the franchise, though luckily the shortcomings are more small foibles rather than fatal flaws. It would've been nice for supporting players like Ilsa to get more screentime while the script is a bit too concerned with expository dialogue for its own good. As the title indicates, Dead Reckoning (Part One) ends on a cliffhanger that avoids feeling as abrupt as the open-ended conclusion of Fast X, but it's still a bit of a weak way to send audiences out of the theater.
Otherwise, though, Dead Reckoning (Part One) is terrific popcorn entertainment that makes 163 minutes fly by like a breeze. One of the greatest assets of the recent Mission: Impossible movies have been their willingness to eschew increasing scope in favor of just coming up with nifty backdrops for set pieces. Rather than be guided by the idea that they have to blow up an even bigger location than the environments in the preceding movie, installments like Ghost Protocol and Fallout just find fun new places to test Ethan Hunt's resolve. There's an infectious creativity to McQuarrie and Erik Jendresen's screenplays that's very much alive here in this latest motion picture. Everywhere from the backrooms of an airport to a tight alleyway to a bunch of train cars can become the perfect locale for edge-of-your-seat thrills in Dead Reckoning (Part One).
Even better, the reliable staples of this franchise feel welcome and earned rather than cheap and predictable. Every time they do a big reveal that somebody's wearing a mask or that trick where they change out actors as the camera spins around a character putting on a mask, I get a little giddy. Meanwhile, Luther's bombastic early line about how he, Hunt, and their friends will "have to go rogue before the mission even begins!" also had me clapping with joy. What a great way to wryly acknowledge how often Ethan Hunt is just abandoning the IMF to save the world. Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning (Part One) is super savvy in recognizing what hallmarks of these features it must deliver while concocting enough new excitement to ensure it's not all callbacks and references. Among the new elements here, Hayley Atwell makes for a fantastic addition to the franchise in her charming performance as Grace, Pom Klementieff is an utter delight as an adversary with a remarkable fashion sense, while Esai Morales is instantly one of the most compelling (not to mention attractive!) villains this franchise has ever seen.
Meanwhile, an extended Rome, Italy car chase sequence is a total delight and feels totally fresh within the saga in how it deftly balances comedic struggles with tangible peril. Similarly, an opening prologue is an eerie and claustrophobic nail-biter of a sequence that gets Dead Reckoning (Part One) off to a start unlike any other in the series. You'll get exactly what you want out of this newest Mission: Impossible feature (lots of Tom Cruise running, look at him go!), but the creativity and excitement that's underlined nearly every entry in this saga ensures there's also some unforgettably distinctive elements at play here. In a summer of lackluster live-action blockbusters, allow Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning (Part One) to remind you just how well-crafted and delightful these kinds of movies can be.
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