Review: Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part One
Where the action is.
In the 27 years since Brian De Palma launched the Mission: Impossible franchise, secret agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) has booked thousands of air miles flying around the globe looking for trouble. He's touched down and done damage in places like Shanghai, Casablanca, Paris, Moscow, and Prague. And he's rained down displeasure on international annoyances ranging from rogue agents and stolen plutonium to sadistic Russians and explosive chewing gum.
Now, in Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part One, Hunt is back in a big way (this is another $300-million movie, like Indiana Jones and the Disk of Destiny) and he's busier than ever.
The McGuffin this time out is extra silly (as if that mattered). It's a sinister artificial intelligence (A.I.) that's grown sentient, made contact with other digital machinery, and is now preparing to, you know, take over the world. Or destroy it, or something. Clearly a job for Ethan Hunt.
This is a pretty great action movie. Returning director Christopher McQuarrie is a genre virtuoso, and Cruise, who turned 61 this week, still seems entirely at ease sailing a motorcycle over the edge of a cliff or banging a car down Rome's Spanish Steps. And when the sun lights up his green eyes and bathes his flawless face, he might pass as an emissary from a species rather different from our own.
However, as relentless and beautifully edited as the action sequences in Dead Reckoning are, it's a movie that has very little interest in anything but action. In that regard, it loosely resembles the John Wick movies—although those films, directed by stunt master Chad Stahelski, have more atmosphere and are more concerned with building Wick's dark, rainy world. What would Ethan Hunt's world look like? (Does he have a puppy?) The Wick films also pay more meticulous attention to their action—every leap and leg sweep seems carefully worked out. In addition, all four Wick movies are rated "R." The Mission: Impossible films are PG-13.
In any case, it's good to see Ethan Hunt and his team back on the beat. Tech guys Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames) and Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg) are here, along with deadeye MI6 vet Ilsa Faust (the excellent Rebecca Ferguson). And there's one newcomer: an adventurer of ambiguous loyalties named Grace (Hayley Atwell—Peggy Carter in the Avengers movies). Atwell is a big plus in this picture, radiating strength and intelligence and keeping up with the Cruise charisma in every scene. (The sequence in which she and the star awkwardly clatter around Rome while handcuffed together in a tiny Fiat is wonderfully funny—as disaster impends on every side, they carp and bicker like an old married couple.)
But the story here is so perfunctory—a self-aware artificial intelligence, you say?—that the affably goofy lines employed to describe the evil A.I. (it's called The Entity) might have written themselves on a slow afternoon. "An enemy that's everywhere, and nowhere," says Ethan's handler, Denlinger (Cary Elwes). "Whoever controls The Entity," says Ethan, "controls the truth." (What?) I'm also partial to Denlinger's description of his old pal as "the incarnation of chaos." (Is there anyone more resolutely in control of himself than Tom Cruise?)
Arrayed against Ethan and his team are a silky terrorist named Gabriel (Esai Morales), who has a memorably well-shot knife fight on a little bridge in Venice, and a steely blonde assassin called Paris (Pom Klementieff), who retires some bad guys on the Orient Express (atop which there's yet another fistfight that's briefly interrupted when the train passes through a tunnel and the combatants have to duck). This sort of scene should be banished from movies for a good long while, along with all future instances of "Sympathy for the Devil" on soundtracks.
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The only thing the MI films have in common with the TV series is the name. The TV series was all about cleverness, subtlety and tension. The MI films are all about Tom Cruise action star, pow, thud.
He’s the one that sells the tickets, so it makes sense.
Sure – I have no problem with Tom Cruise being in a film to sell tickets. I don’t see anything in Tom Cruise apart from a grin and I find him utterly unconvincing as an action star, but I am evidently in a minority.
And I would have liked an MI film that reflected what made the series great.
Cruise has always had massive screen charisma, even when he was doing supporting parts like in Taps or The Outsiders. He’s a lot like Audrey Hepburn in that respect in that both weren’t/aren’t great actors, but they are definitely great movie stars.
He was very good as the villain in Collateral as well. And his most entertaining performance was his Les Grossman character from Tropic Thunder.
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The producers make Tom seem more convincing by using careful shot selection that doesn’t fully reveal Tom’s slight build and shortness. Many actor’s are short people. Only when they are seen in person does it really become apparent that they are lilliputians and could be crushed like a bug. Movie and TV production is mostly about close-ups, facial expressions, and dialogue delivery. Tom can pull most of that stuff off pretty decently. Combine that with his dick clark type youthfulness, and you get a reasonably plausible action actor, and more tithe money for the church of scientology.
where is Shelly Miscavige?!?
LOL. FWIW the role of Scientology in Hollywood for male actors is to try to straighten them when they’re gay but want to be straight, as Scientology says that homosexuality can be cured.
Islam thinks homosexuality can be cured too, by a very long fall.
I think that the casting nadir was when he was, or rather, wasn’t, Jack Reacher. Lee Child makes it a point of emphasising Reacher’s size – 6’5″/250 and strong for that, and a shortarse Cruise could not conceivably cut it. Height doesn’t necessarily matter for an action star – Jet Li, for example – but when you’re playing the screen version of a very big man, then at least some size is necessary.
I would like to have seen Geno Segers (“Banshee”) as Jack Reacher.
The new show with Alan Ritchson is quite good.
And he’s yuuuuge! Absolutely dominates the space he’s in and makes everyone else seem like midgets.
I enjoyed it and he had the presence. He was also pretty good in that sadly cancelled series Blood Drive.
To me the difference is how gymnastic is the role. Shorter people are gymnastic as it is easier for a short athletic person to do spins and cartwheels. Chris Hemsworth or Alan Ritchson couldn’t do the moves Bruce Lee or Jet Li did. But neither Lee or Li wouldn’t have the power.
The perfect Jack Reacher would have been James Arness. Second choice would be Clint Walker. Am I showing my age here?
I believe Tom Cruise is a horrible person and a complete freak show, but I have always appreciated his work as an action star. I’m sure I’ll see this movie and I’ll like it. I guess everyone has an opinion, right?
I believe Tom Cruise is a horrible person
A friend of mine was in “Valkyrie” and he said that morale on the set was always much higher when Cruise was away.
The first film was like that, up until the big action showdown in the chunnel at the end. But every sequel wanted that big action to get bigger and to have more of it.
I think some of the sequels are probably pretty good, I can’t remember all of them. I think Fallout was decent? One of those in there.
The first one pissed me off for some continuity errors. On one occasion they want US treasury bearer (physical, unregistered) bonds – which did not exist. And the Chunnel was shown as a two track single tunnel when it’s two single-track tunnels (plus a third service tunnel) – presumably to accommodate the helicopter.
I have no objection to all-action films – I’m a sucker for most Jyson Styfem films, for example – but I am just unconvinced about Cruise as an action hero, and as I noted above, what made the series so good and original is absent from the films.
Ethan v. Skynet. Fuck yeah.
Colossus: The Forbin project with action sounds pretty cool.
It seems that loder thinks that any notion of anything like there being any kind of danger whatsoever to humanity from A.I., is ridiculous. Thank goodness the writers of this movie and tom cruise are on the case.
What else is also everywhere, and nowhere? The god(s) of most religions. If people can believe in that stuff, maybe they’ll give some credence to the possibility that A.I. is not only powerful, but powerfully dangerous. Tom Cruise can only lead you to water, he can’t make you drink.
This sort of scene should be banished from movies for a good long while, along with all future instances of “Sympathy for the Devil” on soundtracks.
Apparently Kurt Loder hasn’t seen one of the 7 trillion movies that use “The Killing Moon” by Echo and the Bunnymen, or “Here Comes Your Man” by the Pixies.
(atop which there’s yet another fistfight that’s briefly interrupted when the train passes through a tunnel and the combatants have to duck).
That cliched scene was splendidly mocked in “Top Secret” and should have been retired thereafter.
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And there I was thinking it was Martin Landau, Barbara Bain and Peter Graves with “this social media post will be de-platformed in 5 seconds, good luck, Jim.” And it all seemed so reeeal!
The AI plot core goes back to the novel and movie Colossus The Forbin Project (with Eric Braeden). Star Trek the original series was loaded with thinking machines trying to take over but always had their circuits fried after foolishly debating Jim Kirk. As a McGuffin, AI is a pretty good one.
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Why do assassins have to be blonde. I believe it started with Lethal Weapon.
Much earlier than that – Robert Shaw’s character Red Grant in From Russia with Love
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