Arguably the most dynamic, well-oiled, and spectacular action franchise there is, the ‘Mission: Impossible’ series is pure fentanyl for the thrill-ride junkie. But as slick as the films are, if there’s ever been a baseline deficiency, it’s that the series always placed a premium on pounding propulsion over meaningful pulse. Centering on the unknowable super spy Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise)—something of an enigmatic cipher—humanity has never been the series’ strong suit. While the balletic, practical action is non-pareil, the otherwise entertaining films have always lacked the emotional storytelling core found in, say, “Top Gun: Maverick” because of the covert fundamentals behind its mysterious protagonist, a man of many masks and questionable identities. Hunt’s very job has made him unknowable all these years, but that starts to change in installment seven.
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But perhaps Cruise and ‘Mission’ writer/director Christopher McQuarrie—who worked closely on ‘Maverick’ as a producer and some assert something of a post-production supervisor or even director—learned a little something from the way ‘Maverick’ soared to such emotional great heights. Because while “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One,” the seventh installment in the series, doesn’t possess the same consequential heartbeat of ‘Maverick,’ Hunt’s main mask is peeled back ever so slightly. ‘Dead Reckoning’ arguably fine-tunes itself, finally revealing some Ethan Hunt humanity and attempts to course-correct all the ways the films have lacked heart and soul without ever sacrificing one measurement of set-piece ecstasy.
Largely exhilarating across the board, ‘Dead Reckoning’ is easily the best installment thus far (at least for this writer who has desperately wanted that aforementioned pulse), and perhaps precisely because the movie is actually about something this time. Not only does it reflect on the poignantly shaped notion of the “greater good,” service, and sacrifice—and putting those ideals to the test in interrogation—but the notion of these ideals as the ultimate burden the main character has to bear: the axis point wherein his higher oath conflicts with his personal desire to keep his friends safe. Maybe it’s only relatively more meaningful, given the scope, scale, and ambition behind all the pulse-pounding spectacle, but boy, it is appreciated and sold well in the clutch moments.
The narrative? It’s slightly convoluted (and sounds ridiculous), as many of these espionage tales are, but essentially A.I. is the villain, an algorithm known as “The Entity,” that has gone rogue and placed all of the world’s governments on high alert (hey, it works). Without getting too far into the weeds, the story involves a Russian submarine, the plot’s MacGuffin— two highly sought halves of a key that the Entity seeks—the Entity’s powerful terrorist right-hand man and Hunt personal adversary from the past Gabriel (Esai Morales), among many other assassins and killers looking to stop the M:I team.
With the crew on the dangerous quest for these keys and to stop The Entity’s evil plans for world domination, the film shows us old friends (Rebecca Ferguson’s Ilsa Faust), former bosses (Henry Czerny as Eugene Kittridge), new deadly adversaries (Pom Klementieff), and new faces that eventually join the team (Hayley Atwell as Grace, a professional thief and con-woman, who wholeheartedly steals the show).
McQ clearly writes backward, creating gigantic, spectacular set-pieces, and then somehow reverse engineers story, character, backstory, and heart into the film. It’s a dreadful way of screenwriting that usually makes for the biggest disasters in blockbuster films, but somehow, he elegantly pulls it off.
Many of these intense action sequences are stunning (the cliff jump one in the marketing, strangely the most underwhelming), but they all pale in comparison to the train sequence at the end, which is full of danger, emotion, and thrills, and perhaps is the closest embodiment to what might have happened if Alfred Hitchcock was given millions of dollars and technology to pull off ingeniously crafted, death-defying and well-thought-out action stunts back in the 1950s. McQ simply cannot miss, and Cruise’s sheer commitment to making every action moment feel very real and outstanding cannot be understated. Car sequences delight with shrieks of terror and elation; every fighting moment feels visceral and terrifying, and each brutal impact, crash, kick, or teeth punch feels bruising. But it’s the resonant theme, building throughout, that makes all the action that much more painful (and it’s high time M:I figured this out).
Ethan Hunt is basically another plot point in the film. The Entity’s algorithm has identified him as its greatest enemy. Thus, he becomes the story’s Achilles heel. His allies and friends become vulnerable targets, further exposing the hero’s main Catch-22. Is he to live in the shadows and place the mission above all else? Or, like a superhero whose identity is exposed, unintentionally placing a death sentence on all his loved ones, will he have to question his greater call of duty for something actually more important?
For all the electrifying viscera the film presents, it’s this new tension— the personal and the humanity colliding with the more traditional Ethan Hunt modality of doing the right thing no matter the cost— that gives ‘Dead Reckoning’ not only greater purpose but an emotional sense of meaning that elevates already wickedly crafted action sequences into something super special. Things matter to Ethan Hunt now; lives matter too, and not just the millions of abstract lives always at stake in these movies, but rather those who have fought beside him for decades to protect the world. Ethan Hunt’s kryptonite in ‘Dead Reckoning’ is fear, the dread, and anxiety of an acute realization—that the cost of losing his friends for his higher oath is now, all these years later, too high a price to pay. Ladies and gentlemen, Ethan Hunt, has a heart, and it arrives not one second too late.
Who Ethan Hunt truly is and what he stands for is a question that the screenplay seems to inventively consider at every moment. Yes, Jasper Briggs (a terrific Shea Whigham) and his partner (Greg Tarzan Davis) are law enforcement officers trying to bring Hunt down, creating further obstacles at every moment. But their purpose has a function beyond action complication; with each beat and moment, they further become enlightened to Hunt’s own greater purpose, constantly calling into question their own directives and, again, putting them in conflict with their own personal notions of what their mission is versus what the right thing to do is (yep, this thing is like an elegant lotus of writing buried within the action margins).
Yes, there are plenty of subtle callbacks, references, and things like that for ‘Mission’ junkies that laypeople will miss, but none of that really matters. By cleverly recalling a past ghost that audiences have never seen before—the back story of Gabriel, not actually seen in any of the earlier installments, but creatively crafted to make you think they were—McQ and Cruise start to craft the larger, heretofore unknown story of Ethan Hunt, who is he and how he was forged in the flames of the central theme: where haunting personal suffering met the transformative moment when Ethan Hunt first accepted his seminal mission. More of this will surely be explored in ‘Dead Reckoning Part Two,’ and that might be frustrating for some. But if you’ve ever yearned for a human being behind those many crafty disguises, the thrilling ‘Dead Reckoning Part One’ might just be the ultimate installment for you. [B+]
“Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One” debuts in theaters on July 12.