Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One
In cinemas now
Love him or loathe him, you cannot sneer at Tom Cruise’s commitment to keeping the box office alive. His latest outing as super spy Ethan Hunt in the seventh instalment of the Mission Impossible films is one of the year’s most ludicrously entertaining films (in spite of its near three-hour runtime), a claim which is evidenced best by the American actor’s decision to drive a motorbike off an actual mountain before actually parachuting himself to safety.
Such stunts have inevitably become an indistinguishable part of Cruise’s oeuvre as a leading man, so much so that some viewers may be tempted to view them as little more than gimmicks designed to generate buzz. While that may be true to some small extent, above all else such commitment to the craft of making genuinely nail-biting action films demonstrates Cruise’s passion for keeping the experience of cinema-going alive.
Like many films, Dead Reckoning Part One was beset by COVID-related delays to its production schedule, but the final product thankfully shows no such signs of hindrance. And, while its whopping $291m budget helps, props must go to director Christopher McQuarrie and co-writer Erik Jendresen for that, whose delightfully silly screenplay has a prescient interest in rogue AI, although they do lose marks for burdening their robotic antagonist with a name as appallingly lame as ‘the Entity’.
Minor quibbles aside, McQuarrie and Jendresen and, in particular, Dead Reckoning Part One’s special effects team create a thriller that chomps through its aforementioned runtime, delivering a series of set pieces that are progressively more spectacular, with Cruise’s stellar work underpinned by a game supporting cast that includes series regulars Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, and Rebecca Ferguson and a debuting Hayley Atwell, Esai Morales, and Pom Klementieff (whose side character role is far more entertaining than it has any right to be).
With Lorne Balfe’s score helping keep you on the edge of your seat, there are insane stunts, sharp dialogue, and even a few surprise deaths to be enjoyed here. And, with Barbie and Oppenheimer also helping fill global cinemas, this contributes to a stellar summer for true cinema lovers.
