Ethan Hunt and his IMF team embark on their most dangerous mission yet: To track down a terrifying new weapon that threatens all of humanity before it falls into the wrong hands. With control of th...
C’mon guys: this is Mission Impossible. “Dead Reckoning: Part One” would’ve had to try REALLY FREAKING hard to mess up the amount of goodwill it grew over the past few decades. Well…..one semi-massive blunder does try to do that but the rest of the experience thankfully emerges out the other side unscathed.
MOSTLY.
For a film series that has excess constantly injected into its damn bone marrow, this is the first entry in which that excess actively picks apart the very DNA of the series to where it’s overreliance on self-referential jokes, and pre-chewed cliches become more of a hinderance than a help this one time. Regardless, Christopher McQuarrie’s directing is clear-eyed and sufficient; his practicality behind every scene making even the tedious bits worth sitting through.
As for everything else, it’s about what you expect: there’s the occasionally sturdy camerawork and editing, dense sound design, repetitive but well-utilized usage of the production design and fancy locales, that doesn’t become too overbearing thankfully and it’s packed to the brim with a talented coterie of dedicated men and woman that understand the assignment and deliver hearty performances to die for. Tom Cruise explores restraint and contemplation to get as much vulnerability and humanity out of Ethan to varied success but Hayley Atwell and Pom Klementieff are certified scene stealers.
Its pacing charges forward at lightspeed instead of slowing down to reflect on the larger implications, dialogue is still cheesy as ever but that’s to be expected, no huge dependency on CGI is present and unlike Fast X, while it might not lack its usual heart-pounding bombastic action set-pieces, it doesn’t skimp in the thrills department either. If there one thing M:I films know how to exploit well, it’s raising your blood pressure while showing off.
The previous Mission Impossible films, with some exceptions, didn’t need to try that hard at telling a passable story to guide the puzzle pieces along; similar to the Mario games and the recent Furies movie, action is its main priority and thus, driving that action forward is no big issue. However, the other films managed to have one core plotline and a constantly escalating sense of urgency coupled alongside that……so you can see where this films biggest problem begins to creep in. It isn’t so much the presence of a story that’s the issue more than its execution which is a damn shame because the series’ shift in focus on Al and misinformation actually helps the movie feel more like a legitimate spy thriller than an action spot fest. Considering this movie is coming out during a time where A.I is slowly creeping into our lives and threatening to overtake everything, there’s something zeitgeistly poetic about centering a film around an A.I antagonist that’s frightening in how relevant it is to the death of artistry.
It constantly keeps the characters on their toes to where they’re unable to trust their own senses and similar to other M:I films, none of the information becomes too overwhelming to take in despite its best efforts. Thank god the film earns its runtime and doesn’t feel the need to constantly spin its wheels just to waste time.
But it really can’t be helped that despite always prioritizing suspense and intrigue above almost all else, it’s honestly depressing that the one time Mission Impossible actually does try to tell a story, they end up with this oblong plot that has its fair share of plotholes the size of the Mariana Trench; the very inclusion of this villain both helps and hinders the viewing experience. Putting aside how it centers itself around trying to get another MacGuffin plot device, it’s repeated uses of exposition ends up robbing the film of some of its mystique and it falls victim to some bizarre coincidences that had my gears spinning a little bit.
Putting all that to one side, this is still a mission that I’d happily accept…..if not with the slightest of caveats attached to it.
