Your mission…should you choose to accept it…is to admit that, in Real Life, Thomas Cruise Mapother III is a grinning lunatic who staunchly believes in the ‘teachings’ (haha!) of a bizarre and alarmingly sinister cult created by a second-rate science fiction author who PROBABLY created Scientology as some kind of a cheeky tax write-off before it exploded into this trendy Hollywood fringe belief system that has more red flags waving around it than the Vatican.
As I, and I think most sensible, semi-educated adult human beings, see it, Tom Cruise is the poster child for this oddball rhetoric that, truly, there HAS to be something mentally wrong with you to believe in, much less actually aspire to be a member of. Now, I have my deep-rooted and deeply felt issues with ALL organized religions and rampant and horrifying damage they have historically been long responsible for, but there’s something extra cringe-inducing about the goddamn Church of Scientology. So, based on the aforementioned criteria…Tom Cruise is a lunatic, IMO.
But…he is SUCH an entertaining lunatic!
Regardless of how I feel about his personal life and all the trappings that go with it, I will readily admit that the dude is a natural born movie star, with charisma to burn and a daredevil-streak that borders on super-human that’s awesome to behold on The Big Screen. And with his strangely long-lived Mission: Impossible franchise, he seems to have found the perfect action-movie canvas on which to continue painting his deadly stunt masterpiece. You can hate the guy all you want but I think MOST people will admit that, yes, Cruise IS a crazy ass motherfucker who, for the sake of providing quality entertainment to the masses, gleefully takes on some of the gnarliest and most impressive stunt-work ever committed to the silver screen (and has effectively done so for, at least, the last two decades).
Which brings us to the newest entry in the M:I franchise – Tom Cruise has done it again. At 61 years old, the fucking guy continues to push the envelope and that is on full display in Dead Reckoning Part One…and it was great!
The M:I franchise started off on wobbly feet when the first film in the re-imagining of the classic 1960’s espionage TV series debuted in 1996, under the slightly odd direction of Brian De Palma (The Untouchables) where some of the key script points were a bit murky and unsatisfying, rendering the final act somewhat less than gripping. Then in 2000 John Woo (Hard-Boiled) came in and slathered the ‘meh’ bio-weapons hijack story with his overly operatic (and quickly dated) style, a style that up’d the cartoonishness, making it almost a parody of itself. Hollywood began to wonder. But then JJ Abrams (Lost) hopped into the director’s chair and set the series off on the tangent that it’s currently enjoying, a tangent that somehow manages to increase in entertainment quality with each successive entry, especially since Christopher McQuarrie (The Way of the Gun) stepped in for entry 5 and has run with it for the last three titles, each somehow better than the last, in my humble opinion.
Dead Reckoning Part One opens beneath the Arctic ice, where a state-of-the-art Russian submarine, wired up with a prototype AI, reacts to an attack that turns out to be not what it seems. The sub is crippled in the action and sunk. The ship may be dead in the cold watery darkness, but the AI system on board is not.
We then catch up with ‘Ethan Hunt’ (Tom Cruise) carrying out a clandestine operation against his old boss / nemesis ‘Eugene Kittridge’ (Henry Czerny, returning to the role from the first film), where he ends up being tasked with hunting down beautiful rogue British agent ‘Ilsa Faust’ (Rebecca Ferguson) before a team of deadly mercenaries locate her for a $50 million payday, as in her possession is one half of a mysterious key that may have a connection to a spooky new digital enemy named ‘The Entity’ that has emerged to wreak havoc on the scene. After barely escaping with their lives, it becomes a race to locate and acquire the second half of the key while also avoiding death at the hands of a vengeful former operative and his henchmen, all the while avoiding capture by a group of determined head-hunters for the CIA who are hot on their trail.
This was a great Mission: Impossible movie, straight up. There is very little that I have to complain about and the elements that did earn my scorn are virtually inconsequential when it comes to my overall rating. An old friend of mine was in town from The Big City and we’re a couple guys who love to hang out and bullshit movies so we figured ‘why not go check out Tom Cruise’s latest shenanigans at 11:30 am on a Sunday.’
So, we did…and had a great time!
While the larger-then-life espionage stories are usually pretty solid in this franchise, it’s the kinetic action scenes and the massive stunts that keep us coming back, and this movie was definitely no different! There are a number of highly cool and genuinely exciting set-pieces and action scenes spread over the brisk 2 hour and 43 minute run-time, beginning with a haunting scene involving a Russian submarine that may or may not be under attack beneath the Artic ice and ending with Cruise actually zipping among craggy hills at high-speed on a para-wing. In between, we’re gifted with a crazy cat-and-mouse gunfight during a sandstorm, an insane (and often hilarious) high speed chase through an Italian city in a tiny but stupidly over-powered Fiat and an epic extended chase involving a train, a motorbike and a parachute that kicks sand in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny’s opening 15 minutes’ face and steals its lunch money. In between there’s a slew of gunfights, fist fights and knife fights to fill in the gaps. This movie loves knives. There’s a lot of knives. And yes, you also get not one, but two ‘Tom Cruise Sprinting Somewhere’ scenes, so you know it’s a real Mission: Impossible movie.
Awesome action sequences aside, there’s a great cast at work. Returning with Rebecca Ferguson and Henry Czerny are Simon Pegg as ‘Benji’, Ving Rhames as ‘Luther’, Vanessa Kirby as ‘The White Widow’ and Fredrick Schmidt as her trusty brother / bodyguard ‘Zola’.
New to the roster this time out are industry-reliables like Haley Atwell (Captain America) as a skilled-but-vulnerable thief named ‘Grace’, Esai Morales (La Bamba) as ‘Gabriel’, a mysterious and lethal ‘ghost’ from ‘Ethan’s past, Pom Klementieff (Guardians of the Galaxy) as ‘Paris’, a maniacal French assassin, Cary Elwes (The Princess Bride) as a shady ‘company man’ named ‘Denlinger’ and Shea Whigham (Boardwalk Empire) as CIA operative ‘Briggs’. Under McQuarrie’s assured direction, everyone stepped up to plate and gave us exactly what this story needed.
The music score was solid and the sound design had some serious punch, which was very much appreciated, especially where fisticuff’s and gunfire were concerned. The opening submarine scene was a prime example of ‘low end’ used well, to rumbling effect.
If I had to dredge up some complaints, there were a couple plot elements that either popped up or were resolved through convenience but since they usually mutated into a slick and fun action or suspense sequence, they were easily forgiven.
Really, there’s only one thing, admittedly small and trivial, that truly irked me about this flick and what it was, was this – at a couple key points in the movie, a certain kind of knock-out gas canister is used, the gas of which is shown to be very effective. The problem is that on more than one occasion, other characters rush into a room still choked with the stuff and…they’re fine. They’re standing in the same green haze that we JUST SAW K.O. EVERYONE in the room, and they’re peachy. No problems, just breathing easy. Like I said…small shit that just happed to irk me for mere seconds, before I was right back into the flick.
In a nutshell, I really enjoyed this one and certainly appreciate that this is one franchise that consistently delivers the goods and effectively raises the stakes / entertainment value with each successive title. The story is intriguing and timely, the antagonist isn’t something new but they’ve given it enough of its own fresh ‘spin’ as to be compelling and sinister, the cast is attractive and dedicated, the stunts and action scenes are TOP NOTCH and, despite what could be a bloated run-time, it runs at a pace that felt very user-friendly and kept me engaged right to the end. If you like solid action movies and obviously, the previous entries in the series, I’d say you owe it to yourself to catch Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One in the theatre. The fact that so much of the action is epic, and in-camera, just begs for it to be seen on the Big Screen. And as the title blatantly tells us, this is Part One and it definitely ends feeling like the story is about to hit the gas in Part Two, as plot points are certainly left flapping in the breeze but not in a way that left me annoyed. Definitely left me more intrigued and I’m eager to check out Part Two ASAP to see how this crazy adventure will play out…and who will be left standing (psst…no one is safe in this one).
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