"Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One" review — AI takes centre stage in the latest impossible mission
“Our lives are the sum of our choices. And we cannot escape the past.”
Ethan Hunt, like the top-secret spy agency he represents, is getting old. It’s an idea that’s been flirted with throughout the Mission: Impossible series, but in Dead Reckoning Part One, the franchise’s seventh entry since 1996, the question is confronted head-on. In a self-referential scene early into the film, Eugene Kittridge, the director of the CIA, has to explain to several other American intelligence heads that the IMF is, in fact, real and how the group operates. No one else in the room can take him seriously. “Impossible Mission Force?” Are we serious? Maybe it’s time to shut down this organization with no oversight, seemingly unlimited resources, and a long history of going rogue. But there’s no time to deliberate when there’s a world to save. Now, the ghosts of Ethan’s past are starting to catch up with him. The sudden appearance of an old enemy in alliance with a new threat forces Ethan and his comrades into their most dangerous, most rogue mission yet.
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One is the latest entry in the “How long until Tom Cruise dies doing a stunt?” cinematic universe. And, boy, does he put in a good try here. At 61 years old, Tom Cruise puts his body under more physical stress than most action stars half his age. In this film, Cruise stunt drives in a Fiat through Rome, engages in fisticuffs atop a speeding train, does a lot of parachuting, and leaps off of a cliff on a motorcycle. All of this commitment from Cruise, co-writer and director Christopher McQuarrie, and the rest of the M:I team pays off with a finished product that is exciting and so much fun to watch. Although it doesn’t reach the same heights as its immediate predecessor, Fallout (2018), which remains the best in the series, Dead Reckoning is nevertheless a solid entry in the action series. It is a narratively satisfying “part one” that also manages to leave the door wide open for further impossible missions to come.
The story begins under the ice sheets of the Bering Sea where a state-of-the-art Russian submarine is plotting a course back home. To test out its new stealth systems, the submarine has been visiting various international navies and army bases and has avoided getting detected at every turn. But on their route home, a ghostly enemy vessel begins hunting them down, which leads to deadly results for the crew. The force behind the attacks is something called “The Entity,” a rogue AI which has started to develop sentience. The Entity, through its various human agents, is after a key that unlocks a secret vault onboard the submarine, which causes panic throughout the intelligence community. Because the AI is looking for this key, so is the rest of the world, even though most of the world’s powers don’t actually know what it unlocks, although they guess it has something to do with the AI. A way to control it, perhaps. Tasked by the CIA to find the key for the Americans so that they might control the Entity, Hunt instead plans on killing the machine once and for all. Of course, the question remains, how do you fight an intangible entity with no core that can be anywhere at any time and will destroy all of your high-tech gadgets?
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| Tom Cruise and Rebecca Ferguson in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One. Photo via Paramount. |
At 163 minutes in length, Dead Reckoning is bursting at the seams with characters, story, and set pieces. The film’s story takes Hunt and his team from the streets of Rome, to the deserts of the middle east, to the canals of Venice, to the peaks of the Alps while fighting off a horde of enemies. The action is filled with all of the hallmarks of the series: daring heists, masks and false identities, chases on foot and in vehicles, and a few good ticking clocks. Mission: Impossible as a series has remained peerless in how it films its action set pieces in the contemporary Hollywood blockbuster scene. With its commitment to real stunts and practical action, the films have a sense of tactility and visual punch that can’t be found in a world of CGI-generated effects shots. Thankfully, Dead Reckoning is no exception to this.
I think one of the best direct comparisons to make in order to illustrate this point is with Fast X, the latest Fast & Furious film which was released earlier this year. Both films feature an extensive chase sequence set in Rome in which an assortment of high-tech sports cars and some military vehicle chase around the ancient city, including a moment in both movies where vehicles drive down the Spanish Steps. In Fast X, the action is executed on a huge scale with massive amounts of property damage, big stakes (a nuke is going to go off!), and a fleet of vehicles and lines of action. The spectacle and violence are wild and bombastic and more ridiculous than anything Dead Reckoning offers on paper. And yet, the digital imagery of Fast X and the sheer improbability of it all lends the sequence to weightlessness and insignificance. In contrast, the immediate stakes of Dead Reckoning’s Rome chase are simpler — the characters are just trying to save themselves with no cities in imminent danger — but the practical stunt driving, the cinematography, and personal stakes make them seem more impressive and have so much more weight.
The film is “Part One” to the forthcoming Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part Two, currently set for a 2024 release date, which means that the film leaves a few narrative threads and character beats dangling by the end. For those of you who have become frustrated by “to-be-continued” endings to films (which seems to be a growing trend, but not a new phenomenon), you’ll be glad to know that Dead Reckoning Part One still manages to feel like a narratively satisfying experience all on its own. There are three strong narrative acts with each of the principal figures having a defined arc. The film’s ambiguous cliffhanger ending (which isn’t spoiling anything because it’s right there in the title!) feels like an invitation to further adventures, rather than a story cut awkwardly in half. Part One sets the stage for Part Two without feeling like it is reliant on its sequel to complete its story.
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| Esai Morales and Tom Cruise in Dead Reckoning Part One. Photo via Paramount. |
Dead Reckoning sports an impressive ensemble cast of returning and new characters. Franchise mainstays Ving Rhames and Simon Pegg return as hacker duo Luther and Benji respectively. The film finds new ways to test Luther and Benji’s abilities, making them critical assets to the team and giving them arcs of their own. Fun fact about Rhames: he’s the only actor other than Cruise to appear in every Mission: Impossible movie. Rebecca Ferguson returns as MI6 operative turned rogue agent Ilsa Faust, who’s been a recurring presence throughout the McQuarrie era. While Fergusson doesn’t have as much to do here as she does in Rogue Nation (2015) and Fallout, she is nonetheless a welcome presence in the drama and can hold her own very well against her co-stars. Vanessa Kirby reprises her role as the White Widow, a black market broker first introduced in Fallout. Kirby is light on her toes as she alternates from the flirty, charming dealer to a strikingly tough presence when she’s pushed too far. Henry Czerny steps back into the role of director Kitridge for the first time since the 1996 original film. Czerny isn’t as menacing or antagonistic as he was in the original, but he has a strong legacy presence.
Among the best newcomers to the cast is Hayley Atwell who plays Grace, a mysterious woman with a sordid past who becomes involved in the international game of spies rather by accident. Grace adds a tinge of normalcy to the cast as she provides an honest reaction to the insanity she witnesses around her. Also joining the Mission: Impossible series is Pom Klementieff as Paris, a secondary antagonist employ in the service of the major villains. Paris is a character I am wanting more of, partially because Klementieff is so wild in that role (her Venice outfit is one of the best looks in the film) and also because we simply don’t get enough of her in Part One. Esai Morales plays Gabriel, the film’s main human antagonist and an enemy with a long past with Hunt. Morales’ character is, unfortunately, the film’s most underwritten, although we can certainly expect this relationship to be developed further in the follow-up. The cast’s lynchpin is Cruise, back for his seventh run as IMF agent Ethan Hunt. Cruise has the ability to have excellent chemistry with everyone else in this movie. Exuding charm and personality, Cruise effortlessly bounces off all of his co-stars, creating strong, meaningful relationships, even if the details aren’t all in this movie.
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| Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, Tom Cruise, and Rebecca Ferguson in Dead Reckoning Part One. Photo via Paramount. |
In my review of Top Gun: Maverick (2022), I described that film as Cruise’s “quest to save the soul of the movies.” While this sort of thematic overtone isn’t as obvious in Dead Reckoning as it was in Maverick, its AI enemy seems to be even more topical and direct than Maverick’s themes of legacy and “doing it the old way.” It is important to recognize that Dead Reckoning was written well before headlines about ChatGPT, AI-generated images, and other AI-related headlines began dominating our news cycles. But the time of its release, especially amidst the ongoing WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes in which the use of AI by film studios is a major concern, seems to heighten the film’s fears about rogue programming even more. It seems like Dead Reckoning’s impersonal AI force is just as much of a threat to Hunt as AI is to the authenticity of the movies, something Cruise has been defending for years.
The past catches up with everyone eventually and our world-saving IMF heroes are no exception. Dead Reckoning Part One is another solid installment in the Mission: Impossible series. It delivers some excellent action set pieces, a well-crafted game of international espionage, and some excellent performances with the promise of greater things to come. Twenty-seven years and seven films into the franchise, it is remarkable that the series has remained this consistent in quality. Although the antagonists aren’t as compelling as some of the other baddies the IMF has faced off against — it’s hard to top Sean Harris’ Solomon Lane and Henry Cavill’s August Walker — the film pros do make up for its weak spots. It’s hard to have a bad time with the Mission: Impossible crew when the action is this compelling and the performances are as eclectic as they are. The film plays into a lot of the tropes the series has become known for, but uses them all with so much authenticity and conviction, that you can’t help but be enamoured by them anyway. Who doesn’t love a good “unmasking” in one of these movies? The past is coming for us all. And now, we get to watch in glee as Agent Hunt runs right into the oncoming storm, whether it’s sand, ghosts from his past, or the threat of AI.
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One is now playing in theatres everywhere.
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