MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – DEAD RECKONING PART ONE |
★★★★★
9 July 2023
A movie review of MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – DEAD RECKONING PART ONE.
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Director: Christopher McQuarrie (MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – FALLOUT, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – ROGUE NATION, THE WAY OF THE GUN).
Starring: Tom Cruise, Rebecca Ferguson, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Hayley Atwell, Vanessa Kirby, Pom Klementieff, Henry Czerny, Shea Whigham, Greg Tarzan Davis, Esai Morales.
“None of our lives can matter more than this mission,” Luther (Ving Rhames)
Luther’s statement encapsulates what is special about this movie. It seems like only this team right here, right now, can save the world. Most blockbuster thrillers feel like their heroes are interchangeable - any gifted group can tackle their threat. With DEAD RECKONING, there is not enough time to bring other saviours up to speed. Could another squad be trusted with the McGuffin? There is hardly any character in DEAD RECKONING with the full picture. The audience are privy to the secret. We are willing Ethan Hunt’s Impossible Mission Force to learn what we know.
Starring: Tom Cruise, Rebecca Ferguson, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Hayley Atwell, Vanessa Kirby, Pom Klementieff, Henry Czerny, Shea Whigham, Greg Tarzan Davis, Esai Morales.
“None of our lives can matter more than this mission,” Luther (Ving Rhames)
Luther’s statement encapsulates what is special about this movie. It seems like only this team right here, right now, can save the world. Most blockbuster thrillers feel like their heroes are interchangeable - any gifted group can tackle their threat. With DEAD RECKONING, there is not enough time to bring other saviours up to speed. Could another squad be trusted with the McGuffin? There is hardly any character in DEAD RECKONING with the full picture. The audience are privy to the secret. We are willing Ethan Hunt’s Impossible Mission Force to learn what we know.
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The White Widow (Vanessa Kirby), “Truth is vanishing”. In this narrative world, in our approaching future, the inability to trust technology is explored. Plus, the current tsunami of misinformation. DEAD RECKONING is in horror movie territory. The thrust of the plot is weirdly, coincidentally topical, what with these new A.I. chatbots. Artificial intelligence is no longer sci-fi. This is a realistic TERMINATOR movie. And the adversary here is formidable and scary. (If there are any more entries in the series, how can this enemy be topped?) It is given a name, “The Entity”.
Thanks to The Entity’s sentience and ability to infiltrate the internet, the world is at its mercy. Is DEAD RECKONING a call to be more analogue? Do we need smart kettles, smart fridges, etc.? (Check out novel ‘Robopocalypse’ by Daniel H. Wilson for how at mercy we can be.) When America’s intelligence agencies realise their technological networks are fatally compromised, there is an arresting scene of a vast warehouse of analysts using typewriters to transfer the country’s gathered secrets to paper. When you can’t trust your comms, the world is returned to the pre-digital age, the metaphorical stone age in terms of espionage.
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In thrillers, the antagonist is everything. The more daunting, the greater the challenge. The Entity is more frightening than Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Owen Davian from the third instalment [2006] - the human pinnacle of Ethan Hunt’s opponents. (By the way, is A.I. a cheeky metaphor for streaming subscription video on demand killing movie profits?) On a side note, it is implied in both the ‘Dune’ and ‘Foundation’ books that humans have stopped using robots because of the threat they pose.
Just a thought: What if DEAD RECKONING PART TWO, due in 2024, contains a twist, that The Entity is a force for good? We see it here manipulating people to get hold of the McGuffin - the literal key to its destruction, or subservience to whoever possesses it. Maybe it will use its power benevolently?
A chess match is often used as a cliché analogy for the lead and their foes. DEAD RECKONING is instead a metaphorical boobytrapped maze. There is a myriad of choices, all ending in catastrophe, but only one that leads to salvation. DEAD RECKONING is about a globetrotting threading of the needle. The opening is nerve-jangling, the middle is pulse-pounding, the end is cliffhanging.
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In a seemingly endless ocean of crummy blockbuster CGI, this series is invigorating. The stunts, the chase choreography, the battles, are inventive and fresh. In the last year, audiences have been treated to some grandiose train combat: CARTER [2022], PATHAAN [2023], EXTRACTION 2 [2023]. DEAD RECKONG PART ONE’s climax is a welcome addition. (Obviously the pinnacle is still an entire movie: SNOWPIERCER (2013).)
Lorne Balfe’s score is atmospheric and exciting. The sound design is thumping, especially in Rome when a police armoured car pulverises the local vehicles. Pom Klementieff’s Paris relishes the carnage she is inflicting.
We are told the world is after Ethan Hunt. The world is after the McGuffin: an uncopiable key. I was hoping to see international forces hunting him, upping the stakes even further. Maybe in PART TWO? We only see his own side. Of course, he is disavowed. As usual, who can Hunt trust? The staple of this franchise is the difficulty to gauge who to rely on in supposedly friendly governments and their intelligence agencies - to succeed while also unmasking the traitors, and the self-servers and back-stabbers. The BOURNES and MISSION: IMPOSSIBLEs are arguably anti-establishment, while the former is about survival the latter is about world-saving.
There is a lingering negative to the MISSION: IMPOSSIBLEs. The franchise is dispiritingly lacking in diversity, even with a few extra players here. Like MAD MAX: FURY ROAD [2015], the sheer movie quality makes the casting even harder to swallow.
“Our lives are the sum of our choices,” Kittridge (Henry Czerny). Hyperbolic dialogue but without eye-rolling at the exaggeration, because the script is in the hands of the person who wrote THE USUAL SUSPECTS (1995). There’s not exactly characterisation, but buckets of charisma. DEAD RECKONING has added a nemesis, a never-before-mentioned baddie and love interest. The villain is ice. No personality. A torture and killing machine. Almost a robot himself.
The lore of the ultra-covert Impossible Mission Force is humorously distilled at a meeting of America’s intelligence top drawer. We get to know how one is recruited. These people are outlaws, with skills, who are willing to sacrifice. “Your life will always matter more to me than my own,” states Ethan. Ever since GHOST PROTOCOL [2011] (number four), the audience has been reminded why Ethan Hunt does what he does – for the greater good, at an almost total cost to his personal happiness.
DEAD RECKONING PART ONE is two hours 43 minutes of edge-of-your-seat adrenaline and exhilaration, intimidation and dread, a rare blockbuster that is both rivetingly claustrophobic and epic.
