Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One

With each passing year, the mystique of Tom Cruise seems to grow exponentially. His body of work since he first started acting in the early 80s is pretty unparalleled, and attaching his name to a movie is as close as it gets to guaranteeing its box office success before the cameras even start rolling. He is truly one of our greatest and last true movie stars, and the Mission Impossible franchise is perhaps his signature accomplishment. Even the most casual of movie fans are able to recite details of at least one of the many mythical death-defying stunts Cruise has pulled off in the making of these movies. He's jumped out of planes, scaled skyscrapers, driven helicopters, broken ankles, and likely run several combined miles at a full sprint, as he and director Christopher McQuarrie seem to have made it a personal mission to one-up themselves with each installment. "Dead Reckoning Part One" continues the streak of excellence that the franchise has achieved, as the 61-year-old Cruise shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon.

The seventh movie in the series is part one of a two-part send-off for Cruise's Ethan Hunt, the increasingly messianic leader of a small team of secret agents routinely tasked with pulling off impossible missions. This time around, Hunt is facing off against an all-knowing artificial intelligence dubbed "The Entity" and the human agents that The Entity has somehow convinced to do errands for it. Most Mission Impossible movies revolve around Hunt & Co. trying to retrieve various powerful MacGuffins, and this one is different; this time he must retrieve the two halves of a key that is rumored to give access to The Entity's source code, which is the only chance anyone has at either shutting it down or gaining control of it (and thereby the entire world). World governments and evil masterminds alike are all chasing after the key, putting Hunt right in the middle of yet another world-ending doomsday scenario.

Not only is this story split into two separate movies, but "Part One" is 163 minutes long, meaning there is a lot going on here. If you're into these movies mostly for the stunts, they're definitely there, but you may have to wait a little longer for them. Most of the setup is a laborious and often nonsensical affair. While that isn't necessarily a new thing for these movies, it does feel like there's a lot more time spent on characters sitting in rooms explaining exactly what the stakes are. In one particularly painful scene, a room of government agents take turns highlighting the dangers of A.I., in what feels like the actors reading directly from an alarmist Reddit post. The use of A.I as the villain is certainly timely (when isn't it at this point?) and hard to ignore as meta commentary given the current state of the entertainment industry. There are a few moments when the omnipotence of The Entity is annoyingly cliche, but for the most part it lurks in the background, allowing its agents to give it a "human" face.

Which begs the question of why his agents (Esai Morales as Gabriel and Pom Klementieff as a bodyguard) are even working with The Entity in the first place. We aren't really given much of a backstory for these characters, aside from some quick bursts of flashback that tease some sort of personal connection between Gabriel and Hunt, possibly involving the reasons behind why Hunt became an IMF agent in the first place. We can assume we'll get more of this in Part Two, which just highlights some of the annoyances that exist when you split movies into parts.

The women in the Mission Impossible franchise are often its most interesting elements, and the additions of Pom Klementieff and Hayley Atwell (as the uber-burglar Grace) are very good ones. Atwell in particular is tasked with matching Cruise throughout in terms of guile and physical action, and she comes through in spades. She also introduces a welcome dose of humor to the often-dire circumstances surrounding these classic end-of-the-world situations, constantly bringing a kind of "how did I get here" energy, particularly during a very funny scene where she has to take part in a car chase despite not being a very good driver. Klementieff is equally impressive as a fearsome assassin who chases people down with a deranged smile, also showcasing an ability to keep up with the physical demands required of a Mission Impossible actor.

But it's Cruise who once again carries the load, adding a few more jaw-dropping action setpieces to his already immaculate resume. Yes, he drives a motorcycle off a cliff and parachutes into a mountain valley. Even having that moment used in promotional marketing for the movie does nothing to dull its ability to catch your breath. The movie ends in an utterly absurd train chase and crash sequence that features Cruise and Atwell having to climb vertically through multiple train cars as they fall off a bridge, all the while dodging furniture, luggage, and rogue pianos. It's masterful stuff, with a sense of danger that transcends the characters in the movie and has you worrying about the fate of the actors themselves. Cruise, McQuarrie and their team are at the top of the mountain in terms of action spectacle, and the biggest reason is their willingness to do it live instead of in front of a green screen in an Atlanta parking lot.

"Dead Reckoning Part One" is, like its predecessors, a whole lot of fun, and I can't imagine many people leaving the theater disappointed. It might not reach the incredibly high bar already set by earlier movies in the franchise, but it's certainly not because of any drop in action quality. Cruise has put an exclamation point on two summers in a row, and there's almost no doubt that he will deliver again next summer to wrap up one of the greatest action franchises of all time.