Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One

 This review may contain spoilers!

 

Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One is the seventh instalment in the Mission Impossible series and this time pits Ethan Hunt and the IMF team against a sentient AI known as The Entity. I liked that this film felt a little more carefree than the past two features; not because that tone didn't work for those movies but because it made me think back to the times when we first had Pegg and Renner playing in the mix. The one liners really hit home and the film introduces a number of high stakes action or espionage scenarios that have a comedic twist which works to the advantage of the story. I also really enjoyed when this feature trims the large scale narrative down and finds a personal vendetta element, it gives a sense of drive to the film that ups the stakes nicely. This film also introduces Grace, a master thief who really is quite comfortable with pickpocketing and not at all with high speed car chases. Watching Grace and Ethan constantly butt heads until Grace is eventually confronted with a choice to disappear again into her criminal life or join the IMF makes for a fascinating watch. I was so surprised by how nicely paced this film was, nearly three hours in length and it really flew through for me.

 

The cinematography for the feature often looks superb and highlights the appealling on-location shoots, yet the film also really has such a monolithic and detailed approach to the copious action scenes too. I was blown away by the use of visual effects, the derailing train looks great as does the destruction of the submarine at the top of the film. My stomach dropped when Cruise performed his motorbike stunt, this feature is peppered with powerful practical stunt work but it doesn't get much better than that. Lorne Balfe also delivers a fantastic Mission Impossible score that is ringing with intrigue and mystery, those opening credits had the whole audience on the edge of their seats.  

 

Rebecca Ferguson, who played Ilsa Faust, is a little underused in this feature but does not waste a second of her screen time; Ferguson's role is a very hardened and tough figure who quite simply does not know how to back down from a challenge. Tom Cruise, who played Ethan Hunt, continues to lead these films brilliantly; Cruise really gets to showcase his range jumping from charismatic to moments of hollowed out grief right across this feature. Vanessa Kirby, who played The White Widow, is a role I already loved in Fallout but she shines even brighter here; Kirby plays a truly ruthless crime lord figure but also really gets to double as the more skittish Grace wearing an IMF mask of Kirby's White Widow. Simon Pegg, who played Benji Dunn, is really such a great source of comedy for these films; yet I loved the panic as Pegg's character worked frantically to defuse a nuclear bomb in the first act too. Shea Whigham, who played Jasper Briggs, steals the show way more than I expected; Whigham is an American agent with a real chip on his shoulder and watching him steadily fly more off the book was a lot of fun. Ving Rhames, who played Luther Stickell, smoothly glides in as the brains of the IMF team; I loved his comedic back and forth with Pegg but also his ability to switch up and comfort characters like Atwell in key pivotal moments for the team. Esai Morales, who played Gabriel, is an absolutely fascinating new antagonist to the series; Morales exudes mystery and he acts with such intimidating calculation that is often backed up. Henry Czerny, who played Eugene Kittridge, is a welcome return to the series; watching Czerny play an authority figure who feels so weary yet well-accomplished makes him an interesting contrast to Cruise's Hunt.

However, the best performance came from Hayley Atwell, who played Grace. This surprised me, I knew Atwell would kill it but I was not prepared for just how much. When first we meet Grace she's a little aloof and nonchalant, appropriately disarming for a thief. I liked that she had a bit of a cat and mouse rivalry with Cruise going on, her increasing frustration with being pulled into this insane spy world was a fun quality. But then the film and Atwell flip things on us. All that frustration and barbed quipping turns into fear as we come to see the odds stacked against Grace. Her world is turned into a fight for survival after one tense exchange and the levels of terror and desperation we get from At well in that moment are so great. This is a role who spends the rest of the feature wrestling with her own sense of morality, with her expectations of the future and doing her best to make the right call. I haven't signalled a better performance than Cruise on any of my posted Mission Impossible films up till now but Hayley Atwell really just brings her A game for this.

I won't lie, I was kinda worried for the first fifteen to twenty minutes of this film. That boiled down to one plot element that has started cropping up everywhere that I find can be really ill conceived: AI. Hollywood doing the 'AI is the bad guy' trope is something that has increased a lot over the past few years and is often written by screen writers with a very surface level knowledge of the thing they are writing and describing. I was bored to tears by a five minute CIA meeting about this sentient AI in which a handful of great actors did little more than exposition dump in a circle. It really felt lacking in imagination. My other gripe was only a minor one and it revolves around how this film writes Ethan Hunt and his relationship to women. This series has some fantastic actresses playing great characters in it, but there is an element of this film that undercuts them by describing them as potential victims used to get to Hunt. It just feels like these characters are held as emotional stakes for Tom Cruise to weep over first and as well-rounded independent characters second at times.

Pom Klementieff, who played Paris, is really poorly utilised as one of the main henchman figures in the film; Klementieff has already proven her phenomenal range this year so it was underwhelming to watch her deliver barely any dialogue and act out the weirdest turncoat subplot. Cary Elwes, who played Denlinger, is in one of his career worst performances here; this is such a flat character that Elwes delivers as such. Rob Delaney, Indira Varma, Charles Parnell and Mark Gatiss, who played the Security Council, felt like a circle of the dullest characters this film could construct; I couldn't believe such a talented room of performers were saddled with so much empty exposition.

A really solid reminder that sometimes the best kind of blockbuster is one with physical effects, powerful stuntwork and one hell of an A-list cast. I would give Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One an 8/10.