Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One
Written by Andreas Babiolakis
I usually don’t care for action films that keep on trucking through the power of stunts and effects alone because they feel scant as stories. Why are these sequences earned if their respective films haven’t done the due diligence to make them matter? If I want to check out action and action alone, we have many other means of accessing these avenues today via video games, online compilations, and more. However, suppose there is one contemporary franchise I am willing to turn my brain off for. In that case, it is the Mission: Impossible series solely for the fact that I get to see Tom Cruise doing crazier and crazier things and champing at the bit to see what the thrill junkie will do next. Mission Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One has been in the pipeline for years, famously being the lab rat production to see if filming during the pandemic would work. After all of this trial and error, Dead Reckoning Part One was a success albeit a thinner one than anticipated thanks to Barbenheimer stealing its spotlight (but who could have predicted Dead Reckoning Part One’s fate years ago?). Now that it’s available digitally, I expect this latest Mission: Impossible to have a resurgence. Who doesn’t want escapism? Who is tired of strong production and espionage storytelling in a typically shallow genre? Who doesn’t need Tom Cruise to live the lives many of us can never explore? I’m deathly afraid of heights, so there goes that dream for me. Cruise can scale great buildings and dive off of moving planes for my sake.
We start with a half-hour prologue involving the search for a cruciform key and a bit of a reminder of Ethan Hunt (Cruise) and his IMF team. Finally, thirty minutes in the opening credits begin. This feels like an indication that this nearly three-hour feature will be a stretched-out slog, and I was preliminarily worried about these implications. This is the first half of a two-part final film, after all. Chances are Paramount Pictures would want their money’s worth from this sendoff. Fear not, as Dead Reckoning Part One speeds up like a freight train once these credits are done and operates mainly at full pace for the remainder of its runtime. Ethan quickly crosses paths with Grace (Hayley Atwell): an expert pickpocket who has been hired to steal one-half of the key and bring it to the anonymous contractor so the key can be made whole. Grace opts to act alone and swindle Ethan until things go too far, and like so many other people in the Mission: Impossible series, she is tasked with joining Ethan and his crew, getting arrested and facing significant jail time, or dying. Who wants this key and for what purpose? I know Dead Reckoning Part One is old news by now, but I don’t want to spoil too much anyway. In short, there’s a larger story here about the threat of AI and singularity and the “key” acts as a metaphor for the unlocking of unfathomable potential that is to come. When Dead Reckoning Part One was being filmed, perhaps this would seem like a threat to the future. With the delays, Dead Reckoning Part One feels startlingly present. The rapid speed of the capabilities of AI is no joke.
Dead Reckoning Part One is yet another standard Mission: Impossible film, meaning you’ll get exactly what you came for.
As video games get more and more advanced, the line between them and action cinema blurs further. While this may sound like a complaint, this can be beneficial when it comes to understanding how to create nonstop action films with substance throughout. This is the case with Dead Reckoning Part One where the film manages to have lengthy car chases, fight sequences, and more and have nearly every minute matter. In fact, the train sequence’s climax particularly feels like it comes straight out of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (I likely don’t need to explain further for those who have played the game). However, as modern as Mission: Impossible has become, it still feels at least a little rooted in the past, particularly with the handful of convenient moments that pull you right out of the hypnosis the film otherwise conveys. I can suspend disbelief regarding the length and chaos of the train sequence, but not when Ethan arrives at the precise moment — in the precise way and at the precise spot — he is meant to. I like when these missions feel impossible and are brute forced into being possible, not when they are literally impossible outside of the chances of fate. You’re already asking a lot from your audience: don’t ask the world as well.
Otherwise, Dead Reckoning Part One does not feel close to three hours. Not even remotely. It is exciting, engaging, and — best of all — clever, like always. See, I am prepared to turn my brain off and just enjoy these films, and yet they still offer me something to chew on. Here, it’s the complicated game of chess involving Entity (the abstract idea of machine consciousness that is thwarting intelligence and technology to manipulate outcomes in its favour) and the way that all the human players are being engulfed by this new mode of espionage operations. When writer-director Christopher McQuarrie wants to tug his audiences along, he can do so with ease, and his twists and turns come in handy here where the revelations don’t feel either stupid or pretentious. The acting is quite strong as well and we feel like we’re watching people undergo the trickiest moments of their lives and not machines just plowing through obstacles.
What needs to be said about Tom Cruise and this franchise at this point? I do want to give a quick shoutout to Vanessa Kirby as Ilsa who returns here for her third Mission: Impossible film (after Rogue Nation and Fallout), particularly because of her ability to act as Grace acting as Ilsa (you’ll see what I mean): it’s a brilliant performance in a film that never asked her to be this convincing (and yet she goes for it anyway). Through and through, Dead Reckoning Part One is the fun you expect with the thrills and chills that you can always depend on. Maybe don’t expect too much more, especially because this is only one half of a fuller story, and you can have quite a bit of fun for the afternoon and/or evening. For a series deemed Mission: Impossible, they’ve obviously done it yet again.
Andreas Babiolakis has a Masters degree in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management from Ryerson University, as well as a Bachelors degree in Cinema Studies from York University. His favourite times of year are the Criterion Collection flash sales and the annual Toronto International Film Festival.