Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One

 

For those counting, Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One is the first part of the seventh Mission: Impossible movie. They stopped numbering them after Mission: Impossible III in 2006. The franchise is notable in that it has been around for almost thirty years, but has only picked up speed recently, the last four movies being released since 2011. Not that the first movie wasn’t successful, or that Tom Cruise was not a bankable action star. The opposite actually. No, it was just that in the 1990s when the first two movies came out, Tom Cruise had other things to do than action sequences. He was far more of a dramatic actor. He routinely starred in movies that won or were nominated for Oscars (Rain Man, Born on the Fourth of July, Jerry Maguire) or had an element of romance in them. In the late 1990s/early 2000s, he starred in some straight up avant garde movies (Eyes Wide Shut, Magnolia, Vanilla Sky). Unfortunately, the days of Tom Cruise taking risks in roles are over. Now all the risks are purely physical. Since 2011, he has done nothing but action blockbusters. 

The explanation for this lies entirely with Tom Cruise. He gets to pick the movies that he is in. I’m going to hazard any entirely speculative guess though. I bet it has something to do with Scientology. I read a book about this once, and it basically concluded that Tom Cruise was near the top, if not at the top of this “religion” (religion is in quotes mainly because Scientologists believe that it is only a religion for tax purposes. The actual tenets consider the beliefs to be scientific fact, hence the name). Tom Cruise was and is the most famous of Scientology's disciples and its most potent poster child. After all, Scientologists believe that once a person attains a certain level in their process, that, in turn, prevents them from getting sick or aging. The ageless Tom Cruise is in this ideology, almost a deity. That sort of deified status is bound to have effects on a man’s character. In Tom Cruise, it would appear to manifest itself in a sort of manic seriousness. I have a feeling that Tom Cruise is doing all of these action blockbusters, one after another, for the money. I think Scientology has lost a lot of goodwill in the past two decades, probably has a much harder time of winning new recruits than ever before, and Tom Cruise is essentially bankrolling the place. And the best way for Tom Cruise to make a lot of money is to strip away everything about himself that could be controversial and present himself as the ideal mass market product: action-oriented, moral, enough of a sense of humor, and sex appeal (but no actual sex). In other words, a well-produced Mission: Impossible movie, like this one.

Christopher McQuarrie returns as Tom Cruise’s ideal action movie partner. McQuarrie has directed the last three Mission: Impossible movies. He has also written seven of Tom Cruise’s last ten movies, all action blockbusters. The two make a consistent and productive team. I am going to bypass talking about the plot for the moment. What you want to know is if the stunts are still very good. Yes, they are. There isn't a set piece as great as the Burg Khalifa sequence in Ghost Protocal or a fistfight that packs as mean a punch as the bathroom brawl in Fallout, but it all still pretty good. The main set piece is a well-publicized stunt of Tom Cruise racing a motorcycle off a mountain and spending many seconds in a freefall (while speaking dialogue). We know that this is the real thing, but how does it show up in the movie? Well, there is a shot in which Tom Cruise pulls the ripcord for his parachute and is dramatically sucked out of frame. I don’t believe the computers can do that yet. Another very good sequence is a comic car chase with Tom Cruise driving a tiny Fiat with one hand through the streets of Rome. Tom Cruise is becoming known for his chase sequences that have camera angles and backgrounds that so very clearly show that this is the actor driving this vehicle going that fast in this place (see Top Gun: Maverick). 

The plot is yet another world endangering conspiracy. I cannot say I quite grasped it except to understand that the bad guy is not a person at all, but some sentient artificial intelligence. I’m not sure if I should have picked up on what this sentient artificial intelligence wants. Perhaps that will be explained in the sequel. Having said that, it is very dangerous. It is particularly adept at pretending to be human and thereby tricking the other humans so that they think they are interacting with other humans. At the bottom of everything though, it appears that the corrupt national security apparatus of the United States Government may be behind it. A corrupt national security apparatus (dare I say, a deep state) seems to be what Ethan Hunt has been fighting this entire franchise. He starts off on some mission given to him by the United States government only to find out that the U.S. Government is the actual bad guy and that he has been set up. As I've mentioned before, this a trope found in a lot of movies. I wonder if it helps sell tickets overseas. After all, if you vilified a foreign government, those people might be offended. Here, in America, we all take turns vilifying the government with every transition of political power.

The core gang is back together. There is Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt, Ving Rhames as Luther Stickell and Simon Pegg as Benji Dunn. Gone are Jeremy Renner and all other previous love interests. Tom Cruise’s agelessness is exceptional, true, but it can be noted that Ving Rhames and Simon Pegg are aging like normal people. They are all actually pretty old now. Ving Rhamses is 65. Tom Cruise is 61. Simon Pegg is already 53. (You would think he would be much younger than Tom Cruise because his stardom came of age twenty years after Cruise was an established star). The new girl, Hayley Atwell is invited to join the club. Although she is not young at the age of 41, she is still in an entirely different generation. I wonder what the movie would feel like if Tom Cruise, while still remaining in shape and doing all the same stunts, stopped dying his hair and let his face naturally age. Would it be hilarious? Maybe. My favorite new addition is Pom Klementieff, who plays a femme fatale. I had to look her up in order to realize I had seen her a bunch of times in Marvel movies. She plays Mantis, a member of the Guardians of the Galaxy. This is a more interesting/intense role for her and she has, hands down, the best makeup of everyone. Vanessa Kirby and Rebecca Ferguson round out the other female action stars. All the women are between twenty to thirty years younger than our main star, but perhaps this can't be helped. After all, what actress in their 60s do you think could physically keep up. I am blanking here.