Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to watch Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One on the biggest screen possible. Tom Cruise returns as Ethan Hunt in the seventh installment of the long-running Mission: Impossible series. This one features Ethan and his IMF team on a mission to retrieve a mysterious key before it can fall into the wrong hands. Writer/director/producer Christopher McQuarrie has been giving it all to this series since his uncredited rewrites on Ghost Protocol. He returns to direct the third movie in this incredible action spy series, and he continues to outdo himself.
Dead Reckoning Part One is the best action movie of the year. One can expect no less from Cruise and McQuarrie, who have collaborated numerous times, including Mission: Impossible — Fallout and Top Gun: Maverick, two of the best action movies of the century. These two are a force to be reckoned with as they have created yet another high-flying mind-blowing action movie with some of the most well-shot sequences of the series. The opening sequence features a desert sequence that feels like an elevated version of the sandstorm scene from Ghost Protocol. The scene is followed by a dialogue scene that illustrates how this screenplay from McQuarrie and Erik Jendresen elevates every exposition dump with something interesting happening in the background.
Each one of McQuarrie’s movies has felt distinct from each other. With this movie, it seems as if he is putting his spin on the feel of Brian de Palma’s original Mission: Impossible movie from 1996. There is a lot of that tension, especially from the original film’s opening act, where the characters are racing to keep up with the looming terror around them. The film even brings back Ethan’s sleight-of-hand magic, Henry Czerny as Kittridge, and a finale action sequence set on a train. McQuarrie takes everything great about that original film and combines it with the flair that he has consistently brought to this series.
The decision to make a movie similar to the original film works when you consider that the film’s villain, Gabriel (Esai Morales), has ties to Ethan’s past. The movie wisely chooses not to use the popular de-aging trend, using other ways to tell this story. The minor issue is how these flashbacks feel undeveloped, often fleeting in their brief appearances, despite how instrumental the events were to making Ethan the person he is today. The impact these events leave on Ethan is part of what makes his relationship with Gabriel more complex than other Mission: Impossible villains.
The film adds in a few new players. Hayley Atwell portrays a new main character named Grace, a morally ambiguous pickpocket who brings a strong presence to the film. She has shown her toughness and charm in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and her addition to Mission: Impossible is a no-brainer. Another MCU actor entering the series is Pom Klementieff in a villainous turn as Paris, a French assassin hunting down Ethan and Grace.
Ethan, Grace, and Paris are the three main players in a standout scene in the film, which features the best car chase of the franchise. This sequence is packed to the brim with surprises and jokes that make the scene so much more exciting to watch beyond the novelty of fast cars. Some well-timed humor elevates the fantastic stuntwork on display, which is even more impressive as Cruise is doing the driving with one hand.
But with Cruise, you know what kind of mind-blowing insanity you’re getting yourself into. He’s established himself as a bona fide action hero with his commitment to real, practical stunts. In this movie, he performs a heart-stopping stunt for the history books. There’s an excellent buildup to it, and the gripping finale offers everything you want from an action movie: trains, motorcycles, and parachutes. The action is more thrilling when you see how much of it is practical, with Cruise as an action performer doing it for real, like Jackie Chan in Supercop. The final hour will blow your mind with its scope and spectacle, sometimes feeling like a much stronger version of the final action set piece of the first Mission: Impossible movie.
McQuarrie increases the stakes at every turn in this movie. There are smaller moments throughout that define Ethan as a character, grounding the movie while everything else is thrilling. Like most Mission movies, something tends to go wrong, and the team needs to adjust the plan. As Cruise’s character in Collateral would say, “Improvise, adapt to the environment, Darwin, shit happens, I Ching, whatever man, we gotta roll with it.” This creates an exciting narrative that pulls you into the events. The villains are always one step ahead of the heroes, so the heroes must be forced to think two, three, or four steps ahead.
Despite the film’s strengths, it does not soar as high as Ghost Protocol or Fallout. While those movies were virtually infallible, this movie has a few issues holding it back from being a series best. The team element is notably absent, particularly during the final act, which features multiple IMF members far away from the action. The train sequence doesn’t reach the unreachable heights of the helicopter/cliffside/bomb finale of Fallout. Furthermore, as this is a very intricate narrative, storylines like the one with Jasper (Shea Whigham) and Degas (Greg Tarzan Davis) feel the least necessary, only existing to throw some obstacles at Ethan when he least needs them.
However, it’s Cruise and McQuarrie’s fault for establishing such a high precedent with their overwhelmingly fantastic collaborations of the past few years. Given that their last two collaborations were Mission: Impossible — Fallout and Top Gun: Maverick, the fact that this movie is worthy to stand on the shoulders of those two action titans is an accomplishment on its own. Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One is yet another “part one” in a summer that has already had a few with Fast X and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. But this movie feels very complete while setting up what’s yet to come. And anyone who sees this movie will surely be seated for anything else that the incredibly talented Cruise can muster up.
This review will self-destruct in nine seconds.
SCORE: 9/10
As ComingSoon’s review policy explains, a score of 9 equates to “Excellent.” Entertainment that reaches this level is at the top of its type. The gold standard that every creator aims to reach.
Disclosure: ComingSoon attended a press screening for our Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One review.
