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Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning follows IMF agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his team as they try to stop the threat from a powerful AI system that has gone rogue called "The Entity". This puts him in the path of various characters from his past, like former IMF director Eugene Kittridge (Henry Czerny) as well as Gabriel (Esai Morales), an assassin apparently working with "The Entity" that is also responsible for killing someone from Ethan's past.
That "someone" is never really answered because, like several things in this film, it is left dangling there for the inevitable conclusion. But even with those hanging strands and a runtime of almost 3 hours, Dead Reckoning is still a pretty tight action film full of numerous thrilling setpieces; not that Cruise and McQuarrie haven't gotten us used to it already.
The film starts with the old gang back (i.e. Ving Rhames and Simon Pegg) and shortly after, they rope Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) back in again, and then quickly add Hayley Atwell to the mix, a skilled thief that finds herself somewhat unknowingly in the midst of it all. Her addition is one of the best assets of the film because a) she's great, and b) she has insane chemistry with Cruise; and I don't even mean "romantic chemistry". They just play extremely well off each other.
As is customary with this franchise, there are a good bunch of thrilling, action filled setpieces. The most notable for me were a car chase in Rome and a cat-and-mouse heist aboard the Orient Express towards the end. There's also the iconic bike jump/dive which, although thrilling, doesn't really take a lot of time. All of these, and the some, succeed in keeping an energetic pace and never really letting go.
But something that the franchise has succeeded in since M:I-3 is bringing up tangible stakes. As action-filled as it is, you can still feel these are human beings with emotions battling it out there. This is a credit to Cruise as producer and de facto showrunner, but also to McQuarrie's abilities as a writer. However, I wish they would've put a bit more of that work in creating a better threat than a "magical" rogue AI that can sorta do anything/everything.
The counterpart is that the Entity's liaison, Gabriel, is neatly portrayed by Morales. Despite a constant calm exterior, you can still feel the threat boiling inside of him. Even though I'm still not sure about the attempt to tie him to Ethan's pre-IMF past, his performance is really good. Speaking of Ethan's past, it was certainly good to see Czerny back again as Kittridge, so to answer to his question above: Yes, this accomplished the mission and then some.
Grade:
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – DEAD RECKONING
(2023, McQuarrie)
(2023, McQuarrie)
"I'm not going to apologize to you, Hunt. It's my job to use you. Just like it's your job to be used. Did you accomplish your mission or not?"
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning follows IMF agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his team as they try to stop the threat from a powerful AI system that has gone rogue called "The Entity". This puts him in the path of various characters from his past, like former IMF director Eugene Kittridge (Henry Czerny) as well as Gabriel (Esai Morales), an assassin apparently working with "The Entity" that is also responsible for killing someone from Ethan's past.
That "someone" is never really answered because, like several things in this film, it is left dangling there for the inevitable conclusion. But even with those hanging strands and a runtime of almost 3 hours, Dead Reckoning is still a pretty tight action film full of numerous thrilling setpieces; not that Cruise and McQuarrie haven't gotten us used to it already.
The film starts with the old gang back (i.e. Ving Rhames and Simon Pegg) and shortly after, they rope Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) back in again, and then quickly add Hayley Atwell to the mix, a skilled thief that finds herself somewhat unknowingly in the midst of it all. Her addition is one of the best assets of the film because a) she's great, and b) she has insane chemistry with Cruise; and I don't even mean "romantic chemistry". They just play extremely well off each other.
As is customary with this franchise, there are a good bunch of thrilling, action filled setpieces. The most notable for me were a car chase in Rome and a cat-and-mouse heist aboard the Orient Express towards the end. There's also the iconic bike jump/dive which, although thrilling, doesn't really take a lot of time. All of these, and the some, succeed in keeping an energetic pace and never really letting go.
But something that the franchise has succeeded in since M:I-3 is bringing up tangible stakes. As action-filled as it is, you can still feel these are human beings with emotions battling it out there. This is a credit to Cruise as producer and de facto showrunner, but also to McQuarrie's abilities as a writer. However, I wish they would've put a bit more of that work in creating a better threat than a "magical" rogue AI that can sorta do anything/everything.
The counterpart is that the Entity's liaison, Gabriel, is neatly portrayed by Morales. Despite a constant calm exterior, you can still feel the threat boiling inside of him. Even though I'm still not sure about the attempt to tie him to Ethan's pre-IMF past, his performance is really good. Speaking of Ethan's past, it was certainly good to see Czerny back again as Kittridge, so to answer to his question above: Yes, this accomplished the mission and then some.
Grade: