Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning <deep breath> Part One is one of the best films in this disturbingly good franchise. That’s because everyone is trying very hard to entertain, especially Mr. Cruise and Mr. McQuarrie. If we could clone them to make more flicks, we should. Maybe then we’d have a whole cadre of great action pics… and maybe they wouldn’t have had to overstuff this one so much.
Tom Cruise, Simon Pegg, and Ving Rhames are back as the Impossible Mission Force. (tell me if you’ve heard this one before) They must stop a rogue AI that all the other nations on the planet want to control for themselves… and who knows what it wants.
This movie is stupidly long. And by stupidly, I really mean unwisely long because none of it’s actually stupid. They just needed an editor since they don’t have enough plot (or action) to justify the length. On the other hand, none of it’s actually boring… the time went by pretty smoothly. I’m just baffled at how little story they stuffed into almost three hours of runtime… especially in the final act which seemed to go on for a weirdly long time.
On the other hand, some of the action scenes are best in franchise. I especially loved a kind of perplexing car chase around Rome that should teach a Fast or Furious movie a lesson on how to stage these things. Or a particularly harrowing set piece on a train.
The story of a rogue AI being chased by rogue agents isn’t particularly new or innovative. On top of that, the villains were really kind of boring. The AI doesn’t present much of a personality and the main human villain (Esai Morales) kept making me wonder if I’d forgotten him from a previous film. They tried to imbue him with great portentous meaning without providing much evidence or background.
On the other hand, the many many ladies in the film were pretty great. Rebecca Fergusson is back (yes please) and she’s joined by Hayley Atwell who often seems like the (sexy) cat who swallowed the canary. Nice to see her outside of the MCU. They are joined at various points by a returning Vanessa Kirby and Pom Klementieff (whose name I will eternally have to spell through Google). Pom is fun and it’s nice to see her without those MCU bug eyes (though I missed the antennae).
My only regret was not rewatching the previous films in preparation for this one. They bring back a few characters from the past who I have simply forgotten. I kept having to play mental catch up, especially with Klementieff and Kirby looking kind of similar. But that’s on me (and my low-grade face blindness).
I very much enjoyed this film but, due to its length and lack of meat, I had to lower my overall review score. It was THIS close to being best in franchise but wound up closer to second place. Which is still an achievement… I just wish it was a little more tightly packed to justify that runtime.
Score: 88