Dead Reckoning: The Most Fun Mission Impossible In A Decade

Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning—Part One (Christopher McQuarrie, USA, 2023): *** ½  

Since Christopher McQuarrie became the main director of the Mission Impossible franchise, the chronicles of “habitual rogue agent” Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) have seemed unable to err. McQuarrie’s vision dovetailed with lead star Tom Cruise’s, leading them to engineer death-defying action stunts that show off the mad actor’s athletic attributes. Equally crucial, McQuarrie’s first two MI pictures, Rogue Nation and Fallout, weaved new faces with old to better round out Cruise’s supporting cast. They introduced the charming Rebecca Ferguson, brutish Henry Cavill, menacing Sean Harris, and aggrieved Alec Baldwin while still finding room for the warm Ving Rhames, anxious Simon Pegg, and caustic Jeremy Renner.  

However, the essential franchise component McQuarrie’s work struggled with is delivering lighthearted fun. Like the art of Christopher Nolan, there is a joy to McQuarrie’s staging of action, a delight in meticulously bringing imaginative spectacle to life, reminiscent of a child seriously investing in the adventures they dream up for action figures and dolls. But ever since audiences saw Hunt rip off another man’s face to reveal Cruise’s star-studded one in 1996’s Mission Impossible, the saga has contained a silly, goofy layer underneath the combat and crises it depicts. Rogue Nation and Fallout’s intricate plots, visually sleek style, and precise crosscuts dazzled the eyes and pumped hearts full of suspense, but they never coaxed a sustained grin. They produced a funny joke here, an amusing moment there. But nothing in them matched the flamboyance of Brian de Palma filming Hunt as he commits a theft at Langley without letting any part of his body—even his sweat—touch the heat-seeking floor, the ridiculous awe of John Woo capturing Cruise’s wavy hair as he rides a motorbike, the absurdity of JJ Abrahams’ showing a super-agent getting a mission report at 7-11, the unbelievable insanity of Brad Bird displaying how Hunt’s team stresses him out as he hangs, climbs, runs, and jumps off the world’s tallest building in the McQuarrie-written Ghost Protocol. Instead, McQuarrie’s visually helmed pictures carry themselves as solemn, heavy affairs; absorbing entertainment, but serious rather than silly. Until now.  

Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning—Part 1 is a blast, featuring the reliable visual sophistication, complex storytelling, and astounding action of McQuarrie and Cruise while unlocking a fun dimension to their partnership. It’s unclear why Dead Reckoning is the most simply entertaining of their franchise collaborations. Maybe the two are so comfortable now that they can finally relax. Perhaps their work on last summer’s Top Gun: Maverick, which encased marvelous aerial dogfights and a moving mentorship story in a cool, banter-filled summer blockbuster template led to a shakeup in their approach. It’s possible Dead Reckoning being the first chapter of what seems to be a two-part franchise conclusion led McQuarrie and Cruise to resist everything feeling weighty. Whatever the reason for the change, it is refreshing. Dead Reckoning is light on its feet; it’s a sight to see it dance.  

Dead Reckoning’s basic thrills surprise because the art presents the most threatening, mysterious, and dangerous MI villain ever. Unlike the traitorous allies, political terrorists, and genocidal maniacs he’s locked horns with before, Hunt’s foe here is a faceless, shape-shifting nemesis with unclear motives that can infiltrate any government, turn physically imposing or unscrupulously clever people into pawns, and be not only two steps ahead of Hunt and his team, but two steps ahead in infinite potential showdowns. The villain, dubbed “The Entity”, is an AI. Its vanishing, phantomlike nature is diabolically gripping, generating tense and scary sequences. Hands will clasp the sides of seats at the film’s opening, in which a Russian submarine torpedoes itself because it thinks another submarine is attacking when really The Entity is manipulating its tracking software. Gasps will arise when Hunt does one of his classical runs, listens closely to team members Benji (Simon Pegg) and Luther (Ving Rhames) direct him to his destination, only to learn he’s not hearing them but The Entity’s simulation of their voices.  

And yet, Dead Reckoning stops short of being a paranoid nightmare about the dangers AI poses, which may slightly disappoint those who wish for popcorn entertainment to philosophize. Considering how clumsy and lazy Hollywood warnings about technology often are (even in this franchise) it is welcome MI7 doesn’t go down this avenue, especially when the benefit is the giddy, exhilarating, and yet still suspenseful set-pieces McQuarrie and Cruise devise based on this conflict. The submarine self-sabotage features wonderful misdirection by tricking spectators to see the situation exactly as the submarine’s crew does—not through their eyes, but through their monitors—so viewers are left as stunned as them when the surrounding physical threats turn out to be nothing. Even more magical is an Abu Dhabi airport scene where Hunt must attain a key that controls The Entity from a thief named Grace (Hayley Atwell) while avoiding his own country’s agents (Shea Whigham and Greg Tarzan Davis Jr.) and fending off any deception from The Entity. Despite never containing a single thrown punch or kick, the scene is nerve-wracking because it tracks Hunt and Grace’s movements, their evasion of enemies, their forced partnership, and their difficulty trusting each other because they are on opposite sides of the law.  

The airport evasion also introduces Hayley Atwell, whose presence assists in giving the saga a levity facelift. With a classy, elegant, bomb-shell look, Atwell may seem like the perfect candidate to be Mission Impossible’s Bond girl, but MI7 subverts this expectation. Atwell plays Grace as a routine-if-luxurious thief caught in an international affair way over her head. Aiming to merely survive, she will double-cross Hunt the minute she needs to, but also partners with him because he’s often the only one willing to protect her from consequences she couldn’t have possibly foreseen when she chose to steal a simple key. However, with limited experience in combative espionage, Grace is the nearest this to a normal person travelling on one of Hunt’s missions. This fact leads to hilarious moments where she must figure out how to perform some of the bonkers physical feats Hunt does to escape captors and assailants while Hunt must discover how to help free her from jams when she cannot leap, run, dive, and jump like him. Their dynamic peaks in a Rome car chase where Hunt and Grace alternate turns driving while handcuffed together; guessing which is more difficult for Hunt—steering left-handed while cuffed or navigating Grace while she drives like an ordinary person—will bring many smiles to faces this summer. 

As great an addition as Atwell is, Cruise remains the franchise’s core strength. However, his performance is distinct from his past work. So often desperate, tenacious, and driven, Cruise molded Hunt into an eternal virtue engine—a man possessed by the inability to let the world burn and to let his loved ones perish for such a mission. The actor retains such energy in Dead Reckoning, deploying it in select moments for maximum effect, but he also crafts a different feel to Hunt, a more relaxed, mature, and statesman-like vibe. His acting communicates patience, revealing Hunt’s wisdom that as vital as saving the day is, it cannot always be done today, that he needs to allow some of his enemy’s plans to develop so his options for stopping them become clear. Cruise’s demeanor transformation here inspires, as it indicates how even at this age and after all these triumphs, Ethan Hunt can grow into a better man. More importantly, the star’s evolved approach allows him to compliment Atwell harmoniously. It’s easier to believe this Hunt would tolerate Grace’s penchant for undermining him, that he would guide her like a dad counsels a daughter, and that he would convince her to join him in his heroic protection quest, than it is to believe previous versions of him would’ve.  

Ultimately, though, the jaw-dropping, genuinely-performed stunts Cruise partakes in, not his emotional acting, lands butts in seats for Mission Impossible movies, which is splendid for Dead Reckoning since it satisfies this demand exquisitely. With respect to John Wick 4 or Fast X, the debate this year isn’t what Hollywood picture has the best action scenes, but which heart-pounding combat moment from MI7 is the most remarkable and memorable one. Among the contenders: a masterful scene in which Hunt races in Cruise’s patented run through narrow Venetian streets to stop The Entity’s henchmen Gabriel (Esai Morales) from killing a member of his team, which culminates in a compelling fistfight between Hunt and Pom Klementieff’s Paris and a sword-and-knife duel between Rebecca Ferguson’s Isla Faust and Gabriel. A breathtaking shot of Cruise riding a motorcycle off a cliff and then plummeting through the air before smashing into a train window. And a gravity-defying, mind-blowing finale in which Hunt and Grace not only survive a train crash, but carriage collapse after carriage collapse as train parts fall and hang off a broken bridge, forcing the duo to jump upwards from compartment to compartment.  

Despite the impressiveness and ambition of such sights, audiences may feel letdown by how little action Dead Reckoning contains compared to previous MI films. McQuarrie and Cruise seem to save some punches, explosions, and fearless plunges for the second chapter. In the final account, such a decision profits MI7, as it frees the film to create the lighter, delightful, but still gripping action that feels so wondrous after Rogue Nation and Fallout’s dourness. But this choice points to the product’s one critical defect—it is part one of a two-part work, incomplete. As much as Cruise and McQuarrie have figured out, even they cannot crack the code to a problem that plagued films like Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1, Hunger Games: Mockingjay—Part 1, and the otherwise splendid Across the Spider-Verse. Dead Reckoning concludes with a tinge of disappointment as it keeps its story suspended, delays the resolution of emotional conflicts, and skims on some of the spectacle so its sequel can wow next year. 

If Dead Reckoning cannot convey wholeness, however, it evokes the next best thing: promise. Not just promise coming from the sense that good stuff is around the corner, but promise arising from the changes the McQuarrie and Cruise partnership already displays with this entry, changes which give the feeling that anything could happen next. There’s the return to silliness, goofiness, and absurdity, the lack of which has been the only major blemish on the duo’s fantastic franchise work, an unforeseen and invisible enemy, Cruise’s newfound patience, and Atwell’s added winning charm. When combined with the consistent astonishing action, likable supporting players, and McQuarrie’s clockwork-like precise craft, is there doubt that these elements will make Dead Reckoning: Part 2 anything less than a thrilling treat? Dead Reckoning: Part 1 is like the first day of summer: familiar and different at once, a shift in the climate that brings you joy while letting you know more joy is to come.