MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – DEAD RECKONING PART ONE is pure entertainment. It is incontrovertible evidence that star/produce Tom Cruise understands the job description of an action star, giving us a series of breathtaking set pieces with (almost) painless exposition, and just enough plot to keep the whole improbable structure intact as it barrels along at near-light speed. Character development? Just a smidge. Comic relief? Plenty. Chase scenes too numerous to count? Oh, yeah. And nary a filler or repeat performance in the bunch. We are here for spies, counterspies, villains motivated by pure evil, and government officials of dubious ethics. This is a running time of almost three hours that will zip by and make you sad it has to end (with a cliffhanger). Though, honestly, any longer and the audience would be exhausted from all the adrenaline evoked by what its experienced.
This time Ethan (Cruise) is being haunted by an enemy from his time before joining the IMF, and the world at large is being menaced by The Entity. The latter is computer code that has become sentient and, while it hasn’t done anything yet other than announce itself, has started manipulating data, thereby changing the digital reality on which we all depend. Suddenly, truth becomes whatever The Entity decides it is, and controlling The Entity becomes the government’s top priority. Everyone’s government, not to mention interested private parties interested in world domination. Of course, they call in Ethan and his tech team, nervous Benji (Simon Pegg) and serene Luther (Ving Rhames). Further of course, they only tell Ethan to find a key, or rather, half of a cruciform key, with no mention about what it unlocks or about The Entity itself. We know from the prologue deep beneath the Bearing Sea exactly what it is, and the fact that it looks like a giant tomato actually makes it all the more fun.
I’m not spoiling anything by saying that Ethan and his crew figure it out pretty quickly, and that Ethan’s old foe, Gabriel (Esai Morales) is mixed up in it. Also, Ethan’s old flame, Ilse (Rebecca Ferguson), who has once again gotten herself into the sort of trouble from which only Ethan can extricate her. The Entity being something that can be weaponized, Vanessa Kirby returns as the silkily wicked White Widow who is in pursuit of it. There’s also a new face, Grace (Haley Atwell), a pickpocket, among other things, who pickpockets the key during one of the many hand-offs with which the film is replete. Also returning are Briggs (Shea Whigham) as Ethan’s agency nemesis driven to the edge by Ethan’s penchant for going rogue, and Kittredge (Henry Czerny) as the intelligence director who may or may not have come to terms with Ethan’s essential rogue-ness.
So, we have a McGuffin. We have our characters. We have a world on which to play the story out. One minute Benjy is defusing a nuclear weapon at the Abu Dhabi airport, the next he’s guiding Ethan through the narrow alleys and scenic bridges of nighttime Venice. There are shoot-outs in the Empty Quarter of Saudi Arabia, and a train ride through hell in the Austrian Alps (on the Orient Express restored to some of its previous elegance if only to allow for a kitchen fire at the worst possible moment), and a chase through Rome that finds Ethan nearly undone by a yellow mini-Fiat. He isn’t, but it makes for some of the nicest comedy in recent action films as we watch the otherwise cool as ice Ethan visibly stumble through a mid-range car’s workings while handcuffed to Grace and chased by a blonde death machine with a grin and a micro kilted skirt driving an uber-Hummer.
There is a nice rhythm to MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – DEAD RECKONING PART ONE, with a regular tattoo of exposition with planning sessions, confrontations, action set pieces, a carefully calibrated dose of sentiment, on repeat play. Yet, it never feels as though it’s going through the motions, and it never gets stale thanks to a script that is stripped to its essentials, and direction that has an irresistible momentum. If logic is not the film’s strong suit, it maintains an inner cohesion that helps us over that minor problem. There’s also something just a little comforting about a sentient AI that still needs human help to complete its projected mayhem. Maybe that will change in part two. Maybe not. All I know is that I can’t wait to find out what happens next.
Your Thoughts?