A 60-year-old Tom Cruise is returned to rescue the summer blockbuster once again after the phenomenal success of Top Gun: Maverick, this time with an even more frontal confrontation with obsolescence. Dead Reckoning the first part of what was intended to be a two-part finale, Part One, the seventh Mission: Impossible movie, is both a timely reflection on the perils of artificial intelligence and a fast-paced action sequel.
Despite having ridiculous escalations that would cripple the majority of summer blockbusters (looking at you, Fast X), it is by no means the worst Mission: Impossible film. Instead, it is by far the funniest and is a strong candidate for the title of most merely enjoyable of the series.
Even though this is a guy who fights against the future has become more personal for “modern” Hollywood’s biggest star, whose first “Mission: Impossible” movie helped turn him into a living symbol of movies.
What some people might see as centered on the content culture war, Tom Cruise sees as an existential threat. Over the past few years, the actor and producer have turned his unique level of exertion into a holy mission against the forces of technological advances that lower standards (the Eighth Dynamic gives the hardest battles to the strongest warriors).
His feud with the robots should reach hilariously literal new heights in the next film, “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One,” which is silly, passionate, and sometimes divinely dedicated.
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Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One
The seventh installment in the Mission: Impossible franchise, starring Tom Cruise, is a peculiar combination of advanced and low-tech elements, as well as ultramodern and stubbornly conventional elements. The antagonist in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (let’s just call it Mission: Impossible 7 or M: I-7 for short) isn’t just a human creature; rather, it’s a sentient artificial intelligence by the name of The Entity.
As opposed to the majority of AIs, it is not satisfying to just take employment away from diligent journalists. Its goal is to exercise complete authority over every piece of data that exists on the planet. All of this seems to be horrifyingly conceivable, and in an early scene, the danger is highlighted by one of the film’s few memorable visuals (stunts aside): a room full of typists frantically copying the intelligence services’ material from computers to paper so that The Entity can’t read it.
However, not long after that, M: I7’s director and co-writer, Christopher McQuarrie, makes it clear that the picture is not about tech bros or computer viruses. It turns out that the only way to beat the AI is with a little metal key that is made up of two parts that slide together. This key is the kind that people often carry on thin chains around their necks as if it were no more significant than the keys to their bike locks.
Indeed, it is an example of the kind of McGuffin that Alfred Hitchcock probably would have thought to be archaic. The destiny of civilization is going to be determined by stealing and deception, riddles, and challenges, punching and knife battles, vehicle chases, and foot chases, despite all of the original concerns about a computerized super-brain taking over the globe. The climactic scene takes place on a steam train as it makes its way across grasslands and peaks, and the only piece of technology that is really relevant is the machine that creates the gang’s realistic rubber masks.
In this film, Cruise and McQuarrie opulently pay homage to European heist films from the 1950s and 1960s.
With this film, Cruise and McQuarrie are paying a classy homage to the slick European crime thrillers of the 1950s and 1960s.
It’s possible that Mission: Impossible 7 won’t have anything to say about the concerns we now have, but if so, it’s a relief. The fact that Tom Cruise and Christopher McQuarrie have chosen to pay a classy homage to the spectacular European criminal escapades of the 1950s and 1960s is a welcome option in this day and age when all of us have a great deal to be concerned about.
The stunt that is shown on the movie’s posters and promos, in which Tom Cruise rides a motorcycle over the brink of an edge and then freefalls for a period before releasing his parachute, is considered the film’s hallmark stunt. But even this stunt that defies death is performed for the sake of knowing chuckles. It is not even somewhat required of us to think for one second that the ruse is necessary to the progression of the story. On the other hand, it is great to see that Cruise is having fun.
It’s always great to catch up with an old buddy. In the original Mission: Impossible movie, which came out in 1996, Henry Czerny portrayed Kittridge, an officer in the Impossible Missions Force. He returns back in this film as the commander of the whole organization, and he plays the role of Kittridge. Following his explanation of the issue, Ethan gathers his regular crew, which consists of a self-assured computer expert played by Ving Rhames, an anxious computer expert played by Simon Pegg, and a renegade MI6 agent played by Rebecca Ferguson.
They quickly find that The Entity is aided by a nefarious sidekick named Gabriel (played by Esai Morales), who has connections to Ethan’s past. As a result, we get more information about Ethan’s life before he joined the IMF as we did in any of his prior films, although that is not saying very lot.
Gabriel has his very own sidekick, a joyfully violent assassin that is portrayed by Pom Klementieff (Mantis from Guardians of the Galaxy). He interacts with the White Widow, who is portrayed by Vanessa Kirby and is the seductive fixer from Mission: Impossible 6. Oh, and there is also a peculiar pair of CIA spies named Shea Whigham and Greg Tarzan Davis. Their mission is to cause as much chaos as they possibly can in each situation they find themselves in.
They’re a wacky lot, but the antics don’t begin until they’re all running through Abu Dhabi Airport trying to outrun one another. As Ethan approaches the key, the slick thief Grace (played by Hayley Atwell and likely named after Grace Kelly) outwits him. From that point on, she consistently evades him, lending an air of bubbly irreverence to the picture. The brilliant Atwell is also the most sympathetic character in the show.
Even though Ethan never wavers from his purpose, Grace’s story does progress because her interactions with the IMF cause her to experience both fear and nobility in ways she has never felt before. Only in the Mission: Impossible series could a picture co-starring Atwell, Kirby, Ferguson, and Klementieff be so chaste. You would be tempted to claim that she had a flirtatious romantic connection with Ethan, but Cruise is no Cary Grant, and Ethan is too sexless for romance.
Mission: impossible-Dead Reckoning Part One Official Trailer!
Despite this, because of the comedic chemistry between Cruise and Atwell, M: I7 is engaging and enjoyable for its whole two hours and thirty minutes. It’s a good movie, but it can’t compare to Top Gun: Maverick. It isn’t the absolute masterpiece we may have hoped for with all the delays and rumors of Cruise’s relentless labors in order to keep production running throughout the epidemic.
The brutality against women is appalling, and the dark passages seem out of place among the lighter moments. McQuarrie’s favorite approach is to have multiple people take turns to utter a sentence apiece so that their monologue nearly sounds like conversation, but he’s not fooling anybody, and these somber exposition moments are monotonous as well.
The picture also suffers from the issue of seeming too familiar. McQuarrie directs the third Mission: Impossible film, and like the two before it, it reuses actions and locations from recent Bond films, such as an empty Venice. It doesn’t help that it reuses stunts and locations from other movies. Ethan’s pursuit of the villains across the dunes on horseback has similarities to a scenario from John Wick Part 4, which was released in March. Perhaps there are merely too many international action series to choose from these days. His car’s bouncing descent of Rome’s Spanish Steps is reminiscent of a sequence from the May release of Fast X.
It would have made more sense for Ethan and Grace to be swanning about the French Riviera, in light of the movies that inspired Cruise and McQuarrie. Maybe McQuarrie is holding something back for the next Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part Two.
