Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023) Review!!

Synopsis – Ethan Hunt and his IMF team must track down a dangerous weapon before it falls into the wrong hands.

My Take – With long term franchises struggling at the box office, particularly due to fading interest from the public, one would assume that the Mission: Impossible film franchise, which is based on a TV series from the ‘60s and is now spanning 27 years with seven films, would be facing a similar fate. But considering that the 61-years-old global star Tom Cruise remains unstoppable, who are we to say or think anything otherwise?

Last summer, Cruise saved Hollywood after the pandemic slump with Top Gun: Maverick (2022) and after a slew of big releases bombing at the box office this summer, he’s at it again. As his latest release, could very possibly be the best offering of the season with its insane action and a beating heart.

Not only does this seventh film in the hit franchise perfectly fit the Hollywood blockbuster template but also improves on it, gilded to almost undeniable perfection. Hereby, confirming that Mission: Impossible is the best action franchise currently going and possibly ever made. A 163 minutes long adrenaline rush that contains some of the best action sequences put to film.

The challenge in continuing the series is that fans expect each entry to be bigger and more awe-inspiring than the last, and the latest features some of the most incredible stunts ever put to camera. The story is absolutely exhilarating and continues to bring new life to a veteran film franchise. The sheer scale of this film is epic, and with every twist and turn, you cannot help but marvel at the incredible sets used to bring it to life.

Cruise and writer-director Christopher McQuarrie have been working together for the last three M:I films (and the upcoming sequel) and it’s been a winning combination that has made the series’ best films. They have not only taken the franchise to newer heights by distancing themselves from other genre favorites, but have created a unique awe and excitement around each film. Like a running Cruise, the franchise also is as of now unstoppable.

Set sometime after the events of Mission: Impossible – Fallout (2018), the story once again follows Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise), an agent of the Impossible Mission Force (IMF), who finds himself facing his greatest challenge ever. This time, the threat is a “godless, stateless, amoral enemy” and more importantly, eerily contemporary.

Named ‘the Entity’, an artificial intelligence with enough power to rule or ruin the world. While it would be logical to think that every government would want the A.I. destroyed, the major world powers want this sentient form for themselves so they can reign supreme. Determined that no one person or country should have such power, Ethan regroups with Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames), Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg) and Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson), to find the two physical keys that, when combined, can control the A.I.

However, making things difficult for Ethan are Grace (Hayley Atwell), a morally ambiguous thief who inadvertently finds herself in the middle of all the scheming and violence, Jasper Briggs (Shea Whigham), an enforcer for the Community tasked with hunting Ethan, and the mysterious Gabriel (Esai Morales), a man who has ties to Ethan’s past and is now working for the Entity, along with his assassins, including the deadly Paris (Pom Klementieff).

With Christopher McQuarrie back in the director’s chair, the series remains in the best hands imaginable. As he continues to take the best elements of the franchise, amplifies them, and makes the conflict a current predicament which, on a meta-level, Hollywood itself is facing and has led to the writers’ strike.

Sure, the story written by McQuarrie and Erik Jendresen (Ithaca) itself is fairly straightforward, yet manages to hits eerily close to home. The story deals with an algorithm that’s growing in intelligence, and the desire of characters to either control or destroy it. Along the way, there are plenty of corrupt government agents and rogues who want to get this for themselves.

Two decades ago, this plot would’ve been pure science fiction. Nowadays, where news stories about artificial intelligence and corrupt governments and officials are commonplace, it doesn’t feel so farfetched. It makes the final result even more hard hitting.

The series also continues to deliver in the spectacle department. There are about four brilliant action pieces strung together, spaced out with some humorous relief, friendly bonding exercises between Ethan Hunt and his merry men and women, drone shots of European vistas, and some really fast running.

But this one arguably has the best action set pieces we’ve seen in the franchise; we are talking about a series in which Cruise has done a halo jump, hung from the side of a plan, and climbed the Burj Khalifa. The time, he takes it up a notch and jumps off a cliff with a motorbike.

Following closely are the hide and seek sequence around Abu Dhabi airport that is masterfully planned, the car chase around Rome that manages to be both hilarious and exhilarating and that climactic train sequence that will make you physically wince with nervousness. It’s nearly three decades since the release of the first installment in this unexpectedly solid franchise, and it continues to remain a mission you should accept.

Performance wise, Tom Cruise continues to be perfect as Ethan Hunt and the strongest aspect of the franchise. This time around he even gets to explore his vulnerable side. Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg and Rebecca Ferguson continue to play to their strengths. Hayley Atwell does more than hold her own against Cruise. She is the main attraction in many of their shared scenes. Not only is her acting superb, but her dedication to performing the stunts is awe-inspiring. Esai Morales makes for charismatic yet terrifying villain and Pom Klementieff is quite excellent, often overshadowing her co-stars.

Vanessa Kirby continues to shine as the glamorous, scene-stealing arms dealer, while Shea Whigham and Greg Tarzan Davis add to the fun. Henry Czerny makes a gloriously despicable return. In other roles, Cary Elwes, Frederick Schmidt, Charles Parnell, Rob Delaney, Indira Varma, and Mark Gatiss are effective as expected. On the whole, ‘Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One’ is an exhilarating action spectacle that makes for yet another solid installment from a solid franchise.