MISSION IMPOSSIBLE – DEAD RECKONING PART ONE [2023]

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023)
Directed by: Christopher McQuarrie
Written by: Christopher McQuarrie
Starring: Hayley Atwell, Simon Pegg, Tom Cruise, Ving Rhames

USA

IN CINEMAS NOW

RUNNING TIME: 163 mins

REVIEWED BY: Dr Lenera

A Soviet submarine spots something else in the water which keeps disappearing; the submarine is destroyed by one of its own torpedoes. Meanwhile, IMF agent Ethan Hunt’s newest mission is to retrieve half of a key from his ally Ilsa Faust. This he does, but he wasn’t told why, and decides to find out. An experimental AI called the Entity has gone rogue, expanded to potential sentience, and infiltrated all major defense and military systems and intelligence networks. Realising that the key has some connection with the Entity, Ethan sets out to find the other half. He’s joined by old allies Benji Dunn and Luther Stickell, but also after the key are freelance thief Grace, former friend and allay of Ethan’s Gabriel who’s now a terrorist and wants to use The Entity for his own purposes, and a bunch of Community enforcers….

“I’d like you to take a step back and take a good look at yourself, I’m under a lot of pressure right now” says Simon Pegg’s Benji Dunn to Tom Cruise’s understandably rather worried Ethan Hunt after the latter has almost careered off a mountain top on a motorbike and has to find the best place from which to get himself from said mountain top to a train that’s very soon to appear way down below. It might be the funniest line in what might not be the most amusing Mission Impossible [that award should probably go to number four Ghost Protocol], but which must be the most knowing, from Hayley Atwill’s Grace wondering a scene or two earlier how she and Ethan are going to get aboard the same train and we flash forward of two other potential Hunt heroics, to Ethan being told not to go rogue for once and a few scenes later deciding to do that very thing yet again, to some bad guys in Abu Dhabi Airport wondering where on earth Hunt is and in the background we see Hunt running past them through some windows; yes, running like mad as only Tom still seemingly can. But then we’re watching the seventh instalment of a series, a series which hasn’t just not gone stale but which often seems to actually improve, as if Tom, who’s clearly spearheading the franchise, keeps wanting to top himself. I opened my review of the last episode, Fallout, by calling it “the fastest paced 147 minutes you will probably ever see“, but Dead Reckoning Part One pretty much tops it by being the fastest paced 163 minutes you’ll ever see. Maybe it shouldn’t be that long,  but that’s easy to forgive as we’re hurled along by its nonstop series of action set pieces which never really pause for breath. Even the 165-minute John Wick – Chapter 4 slowed down a few times, and we were actually grateful for it doing so. This movie never really does at all, and you could call that a flaw, because its fairly intricate plot is rushed a few times, even though it basically boils down a load of people after a McGuffin, the second part of a key, something else that Christophe McQuarrie and Erik Jendresen’s script refers to jokingly during a chase where not just the viewer but our hero almost loses track of all the folk who are pursuing him.

We start of in a manner similar to a few James Bond films with a super submarine [whose features are explained to us in Russian before its crew then start speaking English, a clumsy device not seen that much these days], up to no good, then detecting something approaching it which keeps seeming to disappear. They fire at it with a torpedo, but the weapon turns around and destroys the submarine. What’s going on here then? It’s soon explained. There’s this experimental AI called the Entity. Originally designed to sabotage digital systems, it went rogue, developed in intelligence, and has now infiltrated seemingly everywhere that’s dangerous. Major powers are racing both to prevent sabotage and to gain control of the Entity, which lies with both halves of a key. What a scarily believable premise this is, and, while it doesn’t dominate the plot, it does feature in a few memorable scenes as our good guys and gals come up against something which can suddenly screw things up for them at any time, whether it be imitating Benji when Ethan is in pursuit and directing him the wrong way, or activating a bomb. Ethan is first assigned to retrieve half of this key from his old aide Ilsa Faust from Rogue Nation and Fallout, who’s had a bounty placed on her. He travels to the Empty Quarter in the Arabian Desert and finds her before they’re attacked, leading to a shootout. The end of this particular scene is placed after the following scene, an odd quirk, though it’s a nice surprise when it turns out she actually isn’t dead and he just tells her to lay low. Hunt doesn’t initially know what the key is for, but, back in the US, he infiltrates a meeting of the Community, where officials of various intelligence agencies, including former IMF director Eugene Kittridge, a character not seen since the very first Mission Impossible, and DNI Denlinger, discuss what’s really at stake.

He and old teammates from several previous missions Benji and Luther set off to find the other half of the key. Apparently the holder is going to be at Abu Dhabi Airport, but it soon gets complicated as various other individuals and factions also turn up there. Ethan manages to evade Community agents as well as Gabriel, who was a friend and ally of Ethan a long time prior to Ethan becoming an IMF agent. We see brief flashback footage of Gabriel shooting a woman whom Ethan cradles, probably the first of many women that he failed to protect. Once again we’re told a little bit more of Ethan’s past, and it’s enticing even if the idea of the villain who was once a close friend and colleague of the hero has been done to death; I pretty much trust this series to do it well though, just like it’s done so many other things well in a remarkably consistent franchise [I’d say that only John Woo’s very disappointing third offering really isn’t particularly good].  At the airport Ethan loses the half-key to profressional burglar Grace, while Luther identifies a piece of baggage containing a nuclear explosive sent by The Entity; Benji narrowly defuses it. Rattled by the Entity’s seeming precognition and the appearance of Gabriel, Ethan goes after Grace alone and tracks here down in Rome, but Community agents and Gabriel close in again. Ethan sometimes seems a little stupid concerning Grace; she takes the half-key off him several times and in a way could be said to try to kill him, but he still rushes to save her. I guess that Ethan remains tormented by all those women he’s failed and this makes him even more determined to save any new ones who are around, including Isla who soon rejoins the team. This adds a poignant emotional dimension to the proceedings even though the emphasis is plain and simply on constant movement as our group also go to Venice and Paris to locate this buyer and learn the key’s true purpose.

With just two proper scenes of exposition and virtually every other piece of information delivered quickly, it’s easy to miss the odd thing and pick up on exactly why these people are going there, but then again isn’t it nice that a modern Hollywood blockbuster actually requires our full attention? The deadening trend these days is to have characters constantly explaining why they are doing what they’re doing, presumably so that viewers can quickly go on their phones and look at whatever incredibly important thing it was that they wanted to look at, safe in the knowledge that they’ll be reminded of what’s going on when they decide to return to the movie, though I resent the fact that these people are being catered on and it also feels like those viewers who are actually prepared to focus on a film are being treated like idiots. The twists and turns are cool though not ridiculous, even if you can also say that, like John Wick – Chapter 4, it’s less a story with action scenes than action scenes with a story, and I don’t see being a problem with that when it’s done as well as it is here. The knife-edge suspense of the airport sequence leads in to a thrilling series of set pieces in Rome, including a car chase that might be one of the most exciting ever filmed, and a foot chase that goes into areas where one almost expects Ethan to be set upon by a little person in a red cloak and hood; the best fight scene is here, Ethan, who seems tougher than ever and has certainly got some increased martial arts expertise, battling two opponents who are either side of him in a tiny alleyway; the choreography and filming are second-to-none. The variety of action we see aboard a train might be a bit more familiar to some, but then by now we realise that, out of all the films in this series, the chief model for this one is actually number one, the final act coming across as the 1996 film’s climax ramped up to the max. All the way through the emphasis has been on the practical thrills rather than the digital, and a refusal to degenerate into utter stupidity, something that a certain other franchise which can sometimes be compared to this one can’t help doing, so does this film lose it a little in its truly over-the-top final thrill which obviously required a lot of CGI? Possibly, but at the time I was too thrilled to care.

Of course it’s possible to see a certain sadness in the idea of one of our last great movie stars, who’s had his own trouble with the digital world involving deepfakes, coming up against AI, in a time where the idea of the movie star is becoming obsolete, partly because its characters [and invariably ones who they’ve seen before] that audiences seem to be more interested in, plus who knows how much AI will one day make the movie star even more a dated thing of the past? The script by McQuarrie and Jendresen refuses to warn or preach except for one quick line, which was probably the right decision, but there’s a slightly frightening and worrying edge to the proceedings nonetheless. I still miss the days when each Mission Impossible had a different director and largely different team; it gave this series a unique freshness. Yet there’s no doubt that, since McQuarrie was asked by his mate Cruise to take over the job of directing and either scripting or co-scripting, he’s got better and better, and here he and cinematographer Fraser Taggart seem to be constantly thinking up new ways to shoot things, with the action being experienced from an amazing variety of angles, while the nods to Brian De Palma’s film continue with a  considerable smoothness and intricacy of visual construction. Unfortunately, after it seemed like a series given to use a different composer for the scores, Cruise bizarerly saw fit to re-employ the man responsible for the worst soundtrack in all the films, Lorne Balfe. His work on Fallout was a tedious bore, showcasing the chugga chugga Remote Control group style of film scoring at its most deadening. Here, he at least offers a bit more variety, but attempts to back emotional moments [one of which manages to be a bit of a choker nonetheless] are arid and thin, and his idea of  being clever is to employ a rhythmic pattern based on a few notes of Lalo Schifrin’s theme for the original TV series. But Tom and Christopher obviously like him, so we may be stuck with him as series composer now.

In the end it’s not that big a problem, but, in a film in which so much is good, bad things like this can’t help but stick out. The fairly large cast of mostly but not entirely returning characters are mostly well juggled. Hayley Atwell’s Grace has similarities to Phoebe Walter-Bridge’s grating character from the last Indiana Jones instalment, which may be enough to put some readers off seeing the film even though I’ve been praising it immensely, but thankfully Atwell has a genuinely sparkly screen personality which more than makes up for this. Vanessa Kirby’s White Widow, returning from the previous one, isn’t allowed to shine as much as before but you’re come out thinking of Mariela Garriga’s deadly assassin Paris for some time, she makes a powerful impression. Cruise seems both tougher and more vulnerable than before, which works really well; while one can wish that he’d return to the days when he played “serious” parts, this series is increasingly giving him opportunities to show his acting chops. And as for the series itself, judging by its current quality, it can go on for a long time yet. Most of us doubted that Fallout could be topped, but it has been, just about, by Dead Reckoning Part One. At the time of writing is seems like an impossible mission indeed for Cruise, McQuarrie and company to better it.