An interesting thing happened last night at the Mission Impossible Fan Event we attended. After the two short promo reels that were part of the event, the wrong movie started running. "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny" is a joint Paramount/Disney production but when we saw the Disney Studio credit logo, we knew this was not Mission Impossible and that the wrong IMAX film was running. Two dozen people got up immediately to inform the management, but it still took nearly fifteen minutes of running the wrong movie before it was corrected. That accident allowed us to see the difference between a completely CGI train fight, which would later compare unfavorably to the practical train fight in the movie we came to see. This was an inadvertent reveal of how meticulous director/writer Christopher McQuarrie and star/producer Tom Cruise are about making their movies. They sure put in the extra effort to make it work for the audience.
"Dead Reckoning" has the kind of plot that could easily befuddle you the first time through. I know a lot of people had difficulty with the first of the Mission Impossible movie plots, and those folks may be happy to learn they are not the only ones who can get confused by the events in these movies. I've got a pretty good grasp on some of the elements but I will probably need a re-watch to clarify some other points of the story. I don't think audiences will be put off however. We know that Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is the good guy, and that his team can be trusted, although uncertainty about Ilsa Faust is understandable. This is the third film in the series in which Rebecca Ferguson's disavowed MI-6 agent has been a part. After "Fallout" we are pretty confident she is on our side, and that's a good thing because she is incredibly competent and formidable.
The other members of the team return and they continue to provide both humor and some grounding for the series. Simon Pegg is as always, a gas who can lighten up a situation with an ironic acknowledgement of the difficulty in front of the team at any time. Ving Rhames brings calm and gravitas to his scenes and makes the tech crew a lot more humanly relatable. The newest member of the team is Haley Atwell, who gets involved with the team and is completely unreliable from the start. Atwell has experience playing a spy so she will be a good fit, although it was jarring to see he character so quickly develop the combat level qualifications that make her equal to some others in the group. She is fit enough and fine, and when her character has to improvise, especially in the climax, she is terrific, but her character is supposed to have a different background and that difference gets ignored as the film moves on.
All the Mission Impossible Films are anchored by great stunts and clever visual sequences. The opening of the film riffs on "The Hunt for Red October", with the same outcome for a Russian sub that was seen in that movie. This is where the confusion starts as well. Although we get an exposition scene from an under utilized Cary Elwes, that comes almost two hours after we have witnessed the opening and we are still trying to figure it out. Of course that is part of the intrigue, but the audience may be wary of everything after this. Elwes and the returning Henry Czerny as former IMF director Kittridge, are set up to be the partial villains of the bureaucracy, the real bad guy appears to be Esai Morales as Gabriel, working on behalf the the real big bad, "The Entity, a self aware A.I. that has taken control of the digital world and is using it to achieve an end that we are not yet sure of. Gabriel has a team, the Intelligence Community has a team, multiple local jurisdictions are involved, and there is a band of bounty hunters, and all of them are after Ethan and Atwell's Grace. At times this feels like one long continuous chase movie. The moments of tension are less about achieving an objective than giving us a bit of a break from the chase. But damn, those are some good chases.
Tom gets to do his patented running man routine at least three times during the film. There are two excellent motorcycle sequences and two equally great car chases. There is certainly a lot of action to go around. The shooting that takes place exhibits the usual poor marksmanship of the bad guys, and the hero team never seems to miss. That is boiler plate stuff. The real highlights come in the train sequence at the end of the film. There is a solid fight on the top of the train, and the Spielberg/Hitchcock inspired action after the train begins going off the edge is going to make your butt clench, even though we know it is just a movie. Once again, the stunt team and the practical effects, make this movie feel completely different from so many action films nowadays. The film ends on a cliff hanging moment, but since it it Part One of Two, no one should be too surprised by that. There is no teaser sequence during or after the titles, these film makers are keeping it real.
This was my most highly anticipated movie of the year with the possible exception of "Dune Part II". It lived up to my expectations and the audience I saw it with was quite responsive. Once more Lalo Schifrin should be getting a huge residual check, his theme is used in the right places and it provides the audience energy needed to propel us through the story. The release of this movie is one of the twisted tales that resulted from the Covis-19 shutdowns. This movie got held up in production by the Pandemic, and the studios juggled how to release this and last years Tom Cruise vehicle "Top Gun Maverick". And just like last year, there is a good chance that Tom Cruise will break the movie going doldrums and get folks out to the theater. Like last year, Cruise may save the summer and the cinema experience. Who says there are no movie stars left?
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