Just when you thought the daredevil action star couldn’t possibly reach greater heights, he exceeds expectations in this jaw-dropping, no-holds-barred sequel, writes Yasmin Omar.
‘Why do we always end up in these situations?!’ a panicked Benji (Simon Pegg) cries out as he sweatily disarms a nuclear bomb using tweezers, with 15 seconds to go before the damn thing blows up Abu Dhabi airport. This is quintessential Mission: Impossible: immense time pressure, resourceful problem-solving, nuclear bombs. In line with its predecessors, the franchise’s seventh instalment, Dead Reckoning Part One, is a search-and-retrieval operation. Capitalising on contemporary fears around the job-stealing, data-mining menace of AI, Tom Cruise’s super-spy Ethan Hunt and his IMF team are tracking down a piece of self-learning tech, known as The Entity, that all the major world powers are straining to find – and weaponise.
Thus begins the latest globe-trotting, blood pressure-spiking adventure for Ethan and the gang. If it sounds familiar that’s because it is. As I’ve written about extensively, each new M:I movie remixes the series’ core ideas of building trust, managing geopolitical strife and delivering (Hunt’s conception of) justice; they essentially play the same notes on different instruments. But you know what? They just work. Better, they excel. And Dead Reckoning Part One is another astounding entry into the franchise.
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023)
Commensurate with writer-director Christopher McQuarrie’s previous M:I efforts Rogue Nation (2015) and Fallout (2018), this film is faultlessly structured. The exposition – that niggling narrative necessity that can be pace-sapping in the wrong hands – is parcelled out into digestible chunks, and strategy discussions are shot with a circling camera that literally keeps up the momentum. The assiduous attention paid to the nuts and bolts of storytelling guarantees that even the DIY phobic are able to put the parts together. Therefore, when plunged into the thick of the action, we can fully immerse ourselves in it as we already comprehend its finely tuned internal logic.
Dead Reckoning Part One is deceptive – and I’m not talking about those ‘gotcha!’ mask reveals (however much knee-slapping delight they inspire). It’s deceptive in its simplicity. So masterfully constructed, so legibly established is the film that you never feel the sheer effort required to make it. Take the Abu Dhabi airport scene: there’s a nuclear bomb in baggage handling, baddies are tailing Ethan in the terminal, he’s tailing The Entity along moving walkways, a new character is introduced in a café, Luther (Ving Rhames) is hacking in a back room, and all the while an unidentified figure sporadically flashes across Ethan’s augmented-reality glasses. The story elements are concurrent, the locations are disparate, and still the filmmaking balances everything with the elegance of a seasoned trapeze artist.
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023)
One of the many things that helps the film ascend into an action-movie league of its own is its considered character work. As Dead Reckoning Part One’s irreproachable craft attests, the only time corners are cut in this movie is when vehicles barrel down one-way streets during high-speed car chases. The M:I casts have become ever more sprawling over the years, and yet everyone from the series regulars (Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, Rebecca Ferguson) to the fresh faces (Pom Klementieff, Esai Morales, Mark Gatiss) is given their moment to shine. Tom Cruise – recently crowned America’s most popular movie star – is practically glowing as he carries the colossal weight of this mega-budget movie on his shoulders, and risks life and limb once more for our entertainment. (On behalf of the filmgoing community, who’ve been starved of the irreplicable thrill of practical effects, thank you Tom.)
And sparks – finally! – fly between him and his newly appointed love interest/adversary Grace, a wily thief played with mettle by Hayley Atwell. She is a wonderful addition to the franchise, outmanoeuvring Ethan at several turns, seemingly able to do everything he does backwards and in handcuffs. Action is character, as they say, so it makes sense that McQuarrie reveals her flinty personality throughout the many gasp-inducing set pieces. Such is the case when she keeps her cool speeding through the streets of Rome, manacled to Ethan, juddering perilously down the cobblestones of the Spanish Steps in a spine-tingling chase. The script mines this moment for comedy, making a lightly risqué joke about a stalling Fiat 500 and having Grace’s breathless shouts of ‘Baby! Baby! Baby!’ feel very R-rated – until it’s revealed she’s trying to get Ethan to swerve to avoid an oncoming pram. Amid all the piercing bullets, screeching tyres and explosive devices, the squirmingly good stunts work so well because the script makes us care about the fate of these people.
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023)
There is an inevitable parasocial intimacy formed between viewer and performer after watching them cheat death so many times, and Cruise has been doing just that as Ethan Hunt nigh on 27 years. The exertions the actor elects to put his body through in this film truly beggar belief, prompting McQuarrie’s on-set mantra ‘This is a terrible idea. When do we start?’. The stunt that the M:I team are touting as ‘the biggest in cinema history’ is awe-inspiring, game-changing, instantly iconic. Paramount recognises its genius to the extent that the studio has been teasing how it was pulled off in a behind-the-scenes featurette that’s played in cinemas for months. Although it has to be seen to be believed, the stunt finds Cruise motorbiking off the edge of a perilously steep cliff-face, wind puckering his cheeks as he plummets to the ground, then lifting himself off the bike and base-jumping onto the carriage of a runaway train. According to said BTS documentary, Cruise spent a year training to achieve this, which involved more than 500 skydives (up to 30 a day sometimes) and 13,000 motocross jumps. I defy you to watch this scene and remain unmoved.
Behind the scenes on the film
I cheered. I applauded. I whooped. I audibly cursed when Cruise threw himself off that cliff. After the billion-dollar brilliance of last year’s Top Gun: Maverick, being struck by the electric bolt of Dead Reckoning Part One – a sophisticated, meticulously made action movie chock full of visceral pleasures – feels miraculous. Now all we have to do is wait for Cruise to, in the words of Steven Spielberg, ‘save Hollywood’s ass’ for a third consecutive summer with 2024’s Dead Reckoning Part Two.
WATCH MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - DEAD RECKONING PART ONE IN CINEMAS
