Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning (2023)
3 min read
It would appear that the media interest with the threat that Artificial Intelligence may have as we move to integrate it and it may have other ideas, the Mission Impossible franchise decides to embrace this in its latest outing in this now 27 year old franchise. Tom Cruise is back to save the world yet again in part one of this new story line the covers characters old and new.
Although this “Mission” reassembles plenty of familiar faces from the 27-year-old theatrical franchise’s history, there are new people to meet with Hayley Atwell, already a proven espionage presence thanks to Marvel’s Agent Carter; and Pom Klementieff, here cast as what amounts to a Bond level assasin far removed from her “Guardians of the Galaxy” friendly alien, continuing to stock the “Mission” team with new blood for some hopefully new long running characters.
As for the aforementioned mission (“should you decide to accept it”), it’s introduced by way of an opening that feels plucked from “The Hunt for Red October,” involving a nuclear submarine with stealth capabilities. The ship runs into trouble from the new AI threat given the ominous name of “The Entity”, this entity apparently having become sentient and a like so many other movies plots it decides to start attacking the world and to throw nation against nation.
Enter Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt, who has enough experience the risks in trying to house break that technology, enlisted to find his old love interest and fellow spy, Ilsa (Rebecca Ferguson), who may hold the key (literally, in this case) to unlocking its secrets.
The hunt for that potentially priceless object also involves a skilled thief, the new entry into the franchise, Grace (Atwell), as well as a baddie (Esai Morales) who ties in directly with Ethan’s introduction to the IMF, whose top-secret existence itself provides one of the several clever jokes about how ridiculous this all is, along with a reference to Hunt’s “habitual rogue behaviour.”
The two-part format does allow the filmmakers to indulge some of their limited-series impulses, from the time spent plotting out Ethan’s mission to a chase scene through Rome (also the setting for a “Fast X” sequence that didn’t know when to hit the brakes making it the apparent go to shooting location this year) that, while entertaining, drags on far too long.
Still the thrills and spills are there as well as the stunts that audience comes to see and have come to expect from the “Mission: Impossible” franchise, from the silly, supposedly lifelike masks and disguises (a staple of the original show too) to the high octane stunts (clearly that would not happen in real life but hey, it’s a movie).
For anyone expecting Cruise to slow down, even a little, as he nears his later years, forget it, as “Dead Reckoning” – the seventh movie in a series deftly reinvented from the ashes of a TV show steeped in Cold War sensibilities – features several positively jaw-dropping aerial stunts, many of them staged during the climactic encounter in and around a moving steam train, which no doubt you can tell is out of control.
The movie does inherit some of the expectations of the Top Gun movies but Cruise does manage to deliver a long (oh so long) movie that is just right in this series, unbelievable and believable with heart and emotions allong the way,
Emotions will run high when you watch parts of the movie but that is the art of storytelling we come to expect from these movies, throw in with the action and the story, suspend your belief in what is possible and enjoy the long ride here. its worth your time. Others may say its rediculouse but that is the point you don’t go to the movies to see reality you want to escape, see the good guy win or at least see them try hard.
All in all we liked this its worth the time 4/5
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