Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One
Remember when Mission: Impossible movies were fun and not just hours and hours of tedious mayhem?
Even since chief Tom Cruise enabler Christopher McQuarrie took over the series and gave into his star’s extreme stunt whims, the adventures of Ethan Hunt and the Impossible Mission Force have lost their initial spark, replaced by something far more hard-nosed and weighty, even as the number of often thrilling action set pieces have remained high.
This ill-fitting tone has never been as pronounced as it is in Dead Reckoning Part One, which finds Hunt (Cruise), Luther (Ving Rhames), Benji (Simon Pegg), and Ilsa (Rebecca Ferguson) in pursuit of a two-piece key whose possessor can control a highly advanced AI dubbed “The Entity” — a word uttered so many times over the course of nearly three bloated hours that it’s a shock something else was chosen as the film’s subtitle.
And man, do these characters love to talk. McQuarrie built a reputation on his excellent, verbose Oscar-winning The Usual Suspects script, but rarely has his writing featured such incessant jabbering. A mind-numbing amount of telling instead of showing is on display here as people clumsily attempt to explain “The Entity,” peaking early with a ludicrous “conversation” at National Intelligence Headquarters where a roomful of high-ranking officials catch Director Denlinger (Cary Elwes) up to speed via what feels like a robotic game of Telephone.
This heavy-handedness gradually renders the entertaining Dead Reckoning Part One unenjoyable, despite multiple impressive high-octane sequences that do what they can to counteract the narrative buzzkills.
A cat-and-mouse stretch in the Abu Dhabi airport that introduces the team to master thief Grace (Hayley Atwell) and the ever-pursuant team of CIA agents Briggs (Shea Whigham) and Degas (Greg Tarzan Davis) is particularly intriguing. And while the subsequent car chase through Rome feels overly familiar, it’s nicely spiced up by the psychotic Paris (Pom Klementieff, Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 3) barreling through the city in her armored Hummer, a la Vincent Cassel’s villain at the Las Vegas apex of Jason Bourne.
But while a weapon as powerful as “The Entity” would naturally attract numerous interested parties, McQuarrie and co-writer Erik Jendresen (Killing Lincoln) struggle to balance the various individuals drawn to it, including returning baddie The White Widow (Vanessa Kirby) and Gabriel (Esai Morales, Ozark), a shadowy figure from Ethan’s past.
In true Agatha Christie fashion, these and other key players all converge on — what else? — The Orient Express in an overlong climactic sequence peppered with laughable good luck and hampered by McQuarrie’s inability to leave well enough alone, nearly to the extent of his interminable helicopter chase scene at the end of the series’ previous installment, Fallout.
To its credit, Dead Reckoning is up front about it being one half of a movie — unlike several other summer 2023 blockbusters — but with Part Two on the way next year, it’s difficult to imagine anything but more of the same. That’s great news for viewers who appreciate the dumbed-down, charisma-free direction McQuarrie and Cruise have taken this series. But for the rest of us, it’s likely going to be yet another long, unpleasant sit.
Grade: C. Rated PG-13. Now playing at AMC River Hills 10, Asheville Pizza & Brewing Co., Carolina Cinemark, and Regal Biltmore Grande.
(Photo: Paramount Pictures)
