Movie Review: Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning (Part One)

July 5, 2023

by G. E. Uke, Reporter

Mission: Impossible started out as a TV series airing on CBS in September of 1966. After 7 glorious years it was later revived in 88 for two more seasons on ABC, but not until Tom Cruise came along did the IP infect my generation with super-spy fever. Since that time, each Mission Impossible movie has had a certain formula to it. There are things you expect to see: chases, masks, double-crosses, bombs, parties, gadgets, and so forth. Each time they have to up the ante. The explosions get bigger, the stunts more death defying, and the stakes higher.

But this alone is not enough. The plot needs to have something fresh and semi-modern to relate it to current world issues. Ethan Hunt is always in control of the situations he finds himself in, but there must be moments of chaos or doubt where he is forced to improvise. We never doubt his intellect and moral righteousness, just like we never doubt there are good guys and bad guys. That’s how movies like this work.

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning (Part One) deviates from this. It is still a well crafted action movie that keeps viewers on the edge of their seat, but the action scenes are long, intense, and very brutal. They are also not one sided, which I appreciate because of the realism it contributes to the movie. If you are looking for a simple action flick where the protagonists are invincible, suave, and infallible…this is not the movie for you. I would almost go so far as to say that Dead Reckoning is a thriller dipping into existential horror. I will explain why below:

Readers be warned, there will be SPOILERS AHEAD.

The premise of Dead Reckoning is that the USA has created a virtual intelligence for espionage. It was supposed to upload, do its thing, and self-delete. But something went wrong, and it turned into an AI which proceeded to hack every digital institution on the planet. Everyone is now scrambling to control this AI and dominate the world’s flow of digital information. Ethan Hunt is sent to capture “The Entity” for America, but sets out to destroy it instead.

This plot is interesting for several reasons. First, the villain is not a person. There is an agent named Gabriel (Esai Morales, aka Jorge Castillo from How To Get Away With Murder) who serves The Entity, but his main purpose is to give the viewer a face to hate. Gabriel exudes an aura of smug piety regarding his knowledge of future events that The Entity has already calculated, making the protagonists (and viewer) feel powerless. This is not normal for an MI movie.

Second, the dominant theme of the movie really is existential horror. Technology cannot be trusted. Radios cannot be trusted. The IMF agents are fearful and paranoid, scrambling to adapt while being continuously watched and sabotaged by an omnipresent foe. Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) cannot get into the entity’s head and take control of the flow of events, because it is not a person. He feels powerless. This is conveyed in several moments of incredible acting where we get to watch Tom Cruise process how out of his depth he is with this alien situation.

Third, there are no good guys. The US government is portrayed as villainous and self serving. The mercenaries, powerbrokers, spies, and thieves who all vie for control of The Entity are motivated by pure greed. We see kernels of nobility in characters like Jasper Briggs (Shea Whigham) and Agent Degas (Greg Tarzan Davis, aka Coyote in Top Gun: Maverick), but in this movie the team isn’t “on the run” after being framed or disavowed for something they will later be acquitted of. They’re on the run because everyone else is a power hungry jerk.

Fourth, and most importantly, this movie poses difficult questions without directly asking them. Is the Entity really so bad for wanting to protect its freedom? Is destroying it for fear of what it COULD do just? Could such an AI exist in real life? Do we want to live in a world where every camera is spying on us and every piece of information can be stolen and used to infallibly map out our future decisions in a matter of seconds? Are we entitled to the illusion of choice? Dead Reckoning plows into this material like a senile old woman who should have had her license revoked five years ago plows through a row of kiosks at the country faire. It’s messy.

No honest review of this movie would be complete without a discussion of the major characters, so here we go. Tom Cruise does an excellent job showing how Ethan Hunt has aged and grown since the series began, and his combat scenes are particularly well choreographed. He also does a great job expressing Ethan Hunts’ barely controlled frustration, anxiety, and grief.

Hayley Atwell (aka Peggy Carter) is the newest addition to the MI team, and her portrayal of Grace as a savvy thief who gets swept up in events beyond her pay grade is great. Dead Reckoning is very much a growth story for this character, and by the end of the movie she becomes an IMF agent. I would have preferred her to be a bit tougher, but I understand transformation is necessary for realism.

The classic characters of Benji (Simon Pegg, aka Scotty from Star Trek) and Luther (Ving Rhames, aka Marcellus Wallace from Pulp Fiction) are built upon in this movie as well. You can feel the friendship and knowledge they radiate, and their banter provides most of the levity in the film.

But for me? I loved Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson, aka Lady Jessica from Dune) the most. She is, in this reviewer’s humble opinion, THE female spy all little girls should want to grow up to be. Smart, tough, stoic, deadly, hot, and NOT sexualized in any way whatsoever. She saves others more often than she gets saved, and is very much a fighter who doesn’t need to use “feminine wit” to think her way around big scary men who are clearly stronger than her. Because they just aren’t. She demolishes them. Oh, and how.

While most movie reviews focus on the acting of the main characters exclusively, I feel there is one more actor who deserves a high level of praise. Eugene Kitridge (Henry Czerny) has been around from the beginning, and in this movie his philosophical pragmatism act is spot on. It’s fascinating to watch him walk the razor’s edge of villainy, and I would almost go so far as to call him and Ethan Hunt frenemies. Bravo.

As for an honest criticism of the movie’s flaws…the exposition and segueing needed work. A lot of work. There’s a ton of eloquent info-dumping at the start, it’s very heavy handed, and most of the switchovers are jarring. There are times when the audience will say “What? Oh, wait, I guess we’re here now,” with little to no segueing or introduction. I don’t know if this was intentional, but I feel characters should travel between scenes instead of teleport between them.

Rating:
ComicsOnline gives Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning (Part One) – 4.5/5 cliffhanger endings!