Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One - Directed by Chrisopher McQuarrie

Other than maybe Owen Davian, the arms dealer played by Philip Seymour Hoffman in the third film, the villains of the Mission Impossible franchise aren’t all that memorable. I believe there is a reason for that and that is that they were never supposed to be the true antagonists. Time, altitude, gravity, chance: These forces are the actual threats facing Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) in the series’ now seven (soon to be eight) entries.

With Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, Hunt might finally face a villain as intangible as the laws of nature he regularly defies. Dubbed The Entity, the film’s antagonist is a sentient AI that can hack into every database on the planet and reshape the world by rewriting what we know to be true. It’s a timely foe for a world that seems to be more and more affected by dis/misinformation and AI anxiety. How can Hunt, a man-made legend by his ability to defy his own destiny hope to stop the hyper modern idea of going to war with algorithmic human behavior?

Adding continuity between entries is writer-director Christopher McQuarrie whose two previous MI films Rogue Nation and Fallout were breakout successes even for this storied franchise. McQuarrie knows how to structure a edge of your seat experience and he doesn’t have to blow up everything in sight to accomplish that. For example, an early sequence at the Abu Dhabi airport where Hunt and his returning teammates played by Simon Pegg and Ving Rhames are simply trying to surveil the sale of a mysterious key. Very quickly the situation balloons as more and more players enter the picture and the key keeps changing hands. A bomb appears as well as a dead body. The bomb’s timer steadily ticks away while Hunt is pursued by three separate groups. The scene is a masterclass in stacking complications while not only not losing the audience but keeping them completely riveted.

You could crash Wikipedia if you bothered to write out all the exposition in Dead Reckoning but where McQuarrie succeeds is that he knows most of those details don’t actually matter. In fact, he directs most of the film with the knowledge that most of the details will fall by the wayside and instead keeps what you need to know front and center through his direction of physical spaces and bodies. Nearly every scene has a character chasing (or being chased) by another character and it boils down to all you need to know at any moment about anyone’s motivations. He also keeps things exciting by bringing in new faces who quickly prove their worth. Hayley Atwell plays a pickpocket of uncertain allegiance whose skills become instrumental to a plot that’s at least half dedicated to “who has the key”. Shea Whigham plays a keystone cop type character who is constantly on Hunt’s tail and always arriving to witness the pileup of cars or bodies. Pom Klementieff spends most of her near silent role grinning maniacally. Officially she’s a French assassin but she’s also a mirror for us, the audience, wearing constant joy on her face as all hell breaks loose onscreen. If you look down the theater row, you’ll see the same face looking back at the screen during those moments.

There’s a wonderful element of comedy to many of Dead Reckoning’s action scenes. Tom Cruise’s escalating feats of daredevilry, which he’s still accomplishing deftly in his sixties, make him maybe the last analog movie star in a world of CGI accomplishments. The beauty though is he’s not being forced to do any of these stunts. He’s a willing collaborator and the result adds an exhilarating true to life edge to the MI franchise. He’s really doing what you see on screen. He really does drive a motorcycle off a mountain cliff. He really does run from the Roman police in a tiny yellow Fiat while handcuffed to his passenger. I’m grinning ear to ear while writing this, still enamored by these sequences days later.

In some ways Mission: Impossible remains thankfully out of step with the modern blockbuster. I place that at Cruise and McQuarrie’s feet. They’re both proven cinephiles and Dead Reckoning is clearly inspired by great moments in other famous works. The opening scene would feel right at home stitched into The Hunt For Red October. The closing one recalls, of all movies, The Lost World: Jurassic Park (you’ll see how). Maybe the most impressive nod though is to Brian De Palma’s original entry in this franchise. McQuarrie’s script clearly tries to commune with the spirits of De Palma’s film with the dialogue heavy trickery, a racing train sequence, the surprise return of an old handler and even the use of Cruise’ likeness circa 1996. Seeing nearly 30-year-old photos of Cruise in this film are a wonderful reminder that the man still has it. In fact, he might have more “it” than ever before. It’s a beautiful expression of human vitality and spirit.

In the near three decades Cruise has been playing Ethan Hunt he’s fused the character’s determination with his own. Much like his return as Maverick in Top Gun last year the actor has ceased to disappear into these roles. He doesn’t want to. Both Top Gun Maverick and the Mission: Impossible movies are monuments to Cruise’s reckless ambition and star power.

Seven films deep you’d think the luster would wear off, but it doesn’t. Cruise and McQuarrie know exactly what makes this series so much fun: watching Ethan Hunt try to think, climb, drive, sprint, or bluff his way through unforgiving odds is a high worth chasing. You can see through the rage he expresses at Dead Reckoning’s malevolent machine the shadow of how Cruise feels watching Hollywood tip more and more in the direction of shooting entire films in green screen warehouses and relying more and more not on star power or ability but on fan serving cameos and intellectual properly. The entire system, now touting the idea of using AI power to transmute performances into assets that movie studios can use time and time again without paying the actors that were essential to their creation, seems to be built to make movie stars obsolete. Cruise, like Hunt, won’t go down without a fight. “Impossible” isn’t in his vocabulary.