Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023)

Up until a few months ago, I had only seen the first two Mission Impossible films. Believe me, I know. It is somewhat sad that it took me this long to get caught up.

Perhaps I was just not yet willing to accept the mission ahead of me.

Thankfully, even at the age of 61 (he was in his late 50s when filming), Tom Cruise seems to have not yet met a mission he has not accepted, and Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One is no exception. Cruise’s Ethan Hunt has a new threat he must face called the entity, which revolves around finding a certain key that all the nations of the world are after, although (mostly) no one knows what it is for. I won’t go much further than that plot wise, except that what the entity represents in the film is fitting for our times, especially in Hollywood with the writers’ (and now actors’) strike.

There are more than enough familiar faces here. Long time team members Luther (Ving Rhames) and Benji (Simon Pegg) are still here, along with fellow spy (and maybe more?) Ilsa (Rebecca Ferguson). There is also the return of The White Widow (Vanessa Kirby) and (for the first time since the original film) Eugene Kittridge (Henry Czerny). 

The newbies this time around are, for the most part, fresh additions (the one exception was the Cary Elwes character. I always have liked Elwes, but his character seemed to be “too little, too late” as an addition). Pom Klementieff is nothing at all like her Mantis of the MCU as she is now portraying a character named Paris, who is on par with some of the best henchmen that Bond ever faced. The most appropriate addition by far is Hayley Atwell as Grace, a professional pickpocket who eventually teams up with Hunt.

As is the case in the other films, Part 1 of Dead Reckoning (the third by director Christopher McQuarrie) relies mostly on practical effects. If you have seen the trailer, you know that Cruise performs the truly death defying stunt of driving his motor cycle off the side of a mountain. This is just one of many truly stupendous set pieces. My personal favorite involved Cruise and Atwell’s characters in a car chase while simultaneously handcuffed to one another. Some of these scenes are true homages going as far back to Buster Keaton.

Parents, the film is a somewhat normal PG-13 film: There is no sexual content (only suggestions of it), and some casual swearing (no F bombs). The rating is mainly due to the action and violence. Middle school and above would be fine.

Very few franchises in the history of film have been as steady as the MI films. None are perfect, but they are (for lack of better phrasing) solid entertainments. None of them really drag at all in their run time (although, in this film, the last act kind of does go on for perhaps ten minutes too much.) I just recently tried to rank all the seven films (this most recent one is around the 4th or 5th spot). If I look at other rankings, I realize it isn’t like other franchises where I could potentially be shocked at how one would rank the films. This is because the quality of the films have been not like a wavy line in their continued quality, but a basic straight line.

Or maybe a lit fuse.

Overall: