Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One: Cruising Altitude, by Scott Nye

Dead Reckoning Part One is the seventh Mission: Impossible film – just about everyone knows what we’re in for here, and unusually, that’s not a detriment. Despite some minor variation, especially across the first five films star/producer/stuntman Tom Cruise used to showcase the diverse talents of directors both seasoned (Brian De Palma) and fresh (Brad Bird), the franchise has been remarkably consistent in both its quality and bravado. Its devoted fanbase will argue endlessly about the best and the worst of the series, all the while admitting that even the strongest dislike (II or III tend to bottom most lists) carries with it a degree of enjoyment.

The franchise has become steadier, stylistically, since Cruise teamed with Christopher McQuarrie, first as an uncredited screenwriter on Ghost Protocol (one legend goes it was he who worked out the narrative way for Cruise to reassert his claim on the franchise when Paramount wanted to hand it off to Jeremy Renner), then as writer/director on Rogue Nation and Fallout. As the latter was the highest-grossing and best-reviewed entry in the series, Paramount greenlit this two-part extravaganza which, depending on the week, may or may not serve as its grand finale.

They, and we, know to expect a series of clever plot mechanics explicitly and unapologetically arranged to maximize the amount of times Tom Cruise runs very fast, jumps off of or climbs something very tall, or pulls off his or another’s face for a dramatic unmasking. Dead Reckoning Part One offers plenty of all this. It is also, somewhat strikingly, the most cartoonish entry, filled with broader-than-usual performances, jokes about the nature and existence of the IMF (standing for Impossible Mission Force, such commentary was overdue), and physical gags that would just as well suit a Jackie Chan film. McQuarrie, whose first film as director was the more-overtly-playful The Way of the Gun, has a knack for how to mine humor from life-and-death situations without diffusing the stakes, an instinct well suited to a franchise built on defying death with a grin.

Even the threat at the film’s center has an air of silliness not attempted since the chase for the unexplained “rabbit’s foot” that drove III, though this one is more incisive today than it would have been had the film met its pre-pandemic-set June 2021 release date target. Miraculously, this film, in which Ethan Hunt races to prevent malevolent forces (most especially the mononymous Gabriel, played by series newcomer Esai Morales) from gaining control of an artificial intelligence program known only as The Entity, will hit theaters when workers worldwide are fearing the exact same threat. Most pertinently and locally, the Writers Guild of America is on strike, partially in effort to control the involvement of A.I. in future storytelling endeavors, and the Screen Actors Guild is deep in negotiations with the same aim.

Dead Reckoning Part One lasers in on precisely those fears, first that A.I. will always seek the most predictable course of action, no matter how destructive, and second that it is capable of providing a workable impersonation of just about anyone with little input. Given Cruise’s similar crusade against computerized attack patterns in last year’s major hit Top Gun: Maverick (also co-written by McQuarrie), this is an understandable theme for him. Visual effects has been replacing stunt performers for over twenty years now, and Cruise has been a major driving force for the value of accomplishing as much as one can in camera. The thrill here of seeing him run across rooftops, drive a tiny car through Venice (while handcuffed to Haley Atwell), engage in hand-to-hand combat in a tiny alleyway, jump a motorcycle off a cliff, and leap between tumbling train cars is incomparable to anything else being done in big-budget American filmmaking, which has increasingly sought to do as much on a virtual soundstage as possible, preferably without actors entirely.

I have so far avoided, and will continue to avoid, any plot descriptions beyond a vague impression of the threat they’re facing. Many prior cast members – Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Vanessa Kirby, Henry Czerny – return from prior installments, only Czerny having his finest Mission hour yet, all as captivating as before. Several new faces come and make their mark. Morales brings devilish charm to his villainous role, which intersects with Ethan’s previously-unrevealed origin story. Shea Whigham remains one of cinema’s last great That Guys, hunting Hunt, alongside Greg Tarzan Davis. Pom Klementieff plays a sort of Harley Quinn figure (I said this series gets cartoonish), with her outrageous temper, white face paint, and short skirts). Cary Elwes enters the picture as a major intelligence figure whose maneuvers may not be entirely professional. Most prominently, Hayley Atwell is the franchise’s latest Cunning-But-Trustworthy Brunette (blondes are the ones to watch out for; how one might read this tendency onto Cruise’s personal life is a subject for another day), a high-class thief whose skills Ethan is a little too invested in, but which makes for a whole lot of fun sleight-of-hand.

That is the essence of a Mission film, and which must be especially embraced here – the things that usually matter in these big-budget affairs (the bad guy’s aims, the stakes, the moral, the backstory, the continuity) are just the rough scaffolding. The point is the stunts, the masks, the deception, the surprises, the complications, the innovations, and the cliffhangers. The runaway train at the center of the film’s climax is analogous to the film’s pleasures – it will keep moving ahead at an incredible rate, and it’s up to the filmmakers to keep finding ways to master it.

Dead Reckoning Part One’s plot mechanics are neither as ingeniously crafty as Rogue Nation nor as brutishly forceful as Fallout, and there’s a touch of tragedy here that it doesn’t quite sell, but McQuarrie continues to expand his vocabulary, finding more and more ways to twist the expectations of the frame and let something unexpected take our attention. Here, the background proves as vital to the developments as the foreground, leading the film’s best surprises; how rare that a film of this scale would even place action in the background, let alone make it a vital part of the enterprise? The sound design, so crucial to the aesthetic rush of Fallout, also takes the fore, especially in the car chase (Hunt’s tiny car all pops and whirs) and looming threat of The Entity. Dead Reckoning Part One is not as overtly stylistic as Brian De Palma’s or John Woo’s entries, but its deployment of the elements of cinema to engage its audience is just as intelligent, creative, and expansive.

Where goes Part Two from here? Straight to the cinemas, of course, where else.