Though the insanely lengthy production of the seventh Mission Impossible started all the way back before COVID, Dead Reckoning couldn’t really be better suited to releasing in summer 2023 unless Tom Cruise and his go-to Mission helmer Christopher McQuarrie were actual time travelers. Just as actors go on strike to fight for their rights against AI and the underhanded tactics of money-grubbing online streamers, here comes a big cinematic event that pits one of our last true movie stars against a malevolent and sentient cyber threat (though it’s less ChatGPT, more Ultron). It’s big, silly bombast, of course, but it’s an endlessly entertaining thrill to basically watch Cruise in a physical battle against the worst excesses of the digital age.
This time out, Ethan Hunt (Cruise) and his IMF team find themselves chasing a phantom – an AI spectre known only as the ‘Entity’ that seems to have become self-aware and is infiltrating the banks and intelligence services of governments worldwide. There is a physical key that allows one to control or kill the Entity, but it’s been broken into two pieces, and it’s the quest to find these pieces and unite them that fuels Dead Reckoning. Even for a Mission Impossible film, it’s a MacGuffin that at times does feel a little too fantastical, but the way the AI is able to mess with Hunt and co’s communications – from faking texts to editing CCTV footage to even creepily imitating their voices over radio – gives back a real paranoia that has been missing from this series since Brian de Palma’s original.
In fact, Dead Reckoning kinda has the feeling of being a Mission Impossible ‘Greatest Hits’ album throughout. It’s got the paranoia and sexiness of the first, the silliness of the second, and the utterly insane stuntwork and relentlessly kinetic plotting of the McQuarrie era, all while probably being the funniest entry into the series. It’s not quite the franchise’s masterpiece – Fallout still holds that title – but to see McQuarrie playing all the hits, while packing in more gags than probably any other instalment, is just so much fun. There might be a few clunkers in the dialogue, but the way the laughs and thrills are balanced is incredibly impressive, while the pacing is just fantastic – it’s over two and half hours, but it just flies by.
Cruise is still the master of This Sort Of Thing, and returning favourites like Rebecca Ferguson, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, and even Henry Czerny all shine too. The new faces are just as good, from Hayley Atwell damn near stealing the film as master thief and IMF new recruit Grace to Pom Klementieff having a blast as psychotic assassin Paris. In the big bad role, Esai Morales doesn’t have the instant icon impact of, say, Henry Cavill in Fallout, but he’s granted a grace note towards the end that is very, very funny. With typical Mission subtlety, Morales’s character, the emissary of an omnipotent being, is called Gabriel, basically letting Cruise go to war with God Himself – a fight that he just might end up winning.
As has been advertised, Dead Reckoning is a ‘Part One’, but unlike Fast 10 or Across the Spiderverse earlier this year, there is still a fully satisfying story being told here, ending on less a cliffhanger and more just a readiness for the next chapter, a la one of the Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings films. A lot of this is down to just how damn exciting the set-pieces are, McQuarrie, Cruise, and DOP Fraser Taggart again achieving the seemingly impossible with every stunt. Obviously, the much-trailed motorbike cliff jump is awe-inspiring, and that’s not even the best sequence. For me, top honours are shared between a claustrophobic punch-up in a tiny alley between Hunt and Paris that is just *brutal* and the climactic train crash, which is almost as exciting as the finale of Maverick.
It’s a classic Mission finale of absurdly intricate stuntwork and ticking clock danger, with Cruise nailing it (again) and newcomer Atwell fitting into the madness like an old pro – it’s not a stretch to say that this is her best ever film role. One might think that, after seven films, this now 27-year-old series might have run out of ways to make a countdown to zero into a truly nail-biting, sweaty-palmed affair, but Cruise and McQuarrie are here to, yet again, dismantle that notion and show the flaccid CG ‘action’ movies that still dominate summer schedules exactly how it’s done.
Jack Blackwell – Film Reviews 