And in “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, Part One,” Tom Cruise rides a motorcycle off a mountain. A motherfucking mountain, y’all.
Granted, he’s wearing a parachute, but I would like to see any other actor alive do the same thing and not shit themselves in the process.
And that’s why the “Mission: Impossible” franchise with its seventh entry can officially hammer-nail shut any argument as to whether it’s the greatest American action franchise of all time. Honestly, the only other film series that could make a case is the “John Wick” franchise, but those movies are almost in a league of their own, or a subgenre of their own.
After 27 years, it’s also fair to say that if all hell ever breaks loose, I want Tom Cruise on my side.
Why?
After 27 years, I believe I am watching Ethan Hunt and not Tom Cruise, and yet I also know they are one in the same, indistinguishable, a yin and yang so perfectly paired that they have created their own alternate reality where they really are one in the same and he is both an acclaimed actor and an indestructible super spy.
To prepare for “Dead Reckoning, Part One,” which is easily the second-best film in this franchise, I went back and watched all six previous films, starting with the most recent “Fallout,” which still tops the Best Of list, all the way back to 1996’s Brian De Palma-directed debut.
The merging of actor and role has been there throughout, with Cruise steadily becoming more inseparable from Hunt with each successive film, with every one-up-and-over self-performed super stunt, with every impressive takeoff and even more satisfying landing.
In fact, I’ll go so far as to say the “Mission: Impossible” films are the IMF (“Impossible Mission Force”) of cinema. They are those rare films that equally don’t suck and not only succeed always, but collectively improve with each outing. They adapt. They embody. They represent.
“Dead Reckoning Part One” is about sentient AI. And the danger of fake news. That shit is real, it’s happening right now, and it’s real scary.
In 2000, Cruise knew to hire John Woo to direct “Mission: Impossible 2,” when overseas cinema was producing mega-hits, and Woo literally made a Chinese action film starring Tom Cruise. It’s a solid flick, and yet it’s easily ranked at the very bottom of the IMF list, if only because it along with the first movie and “Mission: Impossible III” had yet to calibrate the machine for optimum output.
That era began in 2011 with “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol,” continued in 2015 with “Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation,” and reached what would be the apex for any other film series with its sixth entry, “Fallout,” in 2018.
Five years, and one global pandemic, later, and we have now ascended even higher with “Dead Reckoning, Part One,” which calls back to 1996 by reintroducing Kittridge (Henry Czerny) as a government foil to Hunt, who kickstarts this latest mission by putting a bounty on the head of Ilsa Faust, who was first introduced in “Rogue Nation.”
The big bad in “Dead Reckoning, Part One” is The Entity, which is the sentient AI, but it also could be life itself, and aging, which Cruise thankfully gives the middle finger to.
Not for nothing, but I personally adore that this feels like the first time in the IMF franchise that the audience has been allowed to truly peek behind the Ethan Hunt, Super Spy curtain and see even a measure of doubt and worry. Sure, there was a moment in “Ghost Protocol” when Hunt/Cruise was dangling by a glove from a skyscraper in Dubai that he seemed somewhat anxious, but “Dead Reckoning, Part One” goes further, allowing Hunt/Cruise to get testy, frustrated and decidedly human, which further blurs the line between reality and movie magic, which fully allows fans to suspend belief and give over to the idea that actor and character are the same.
Almost the entirety of “Dead Reckoning, Part One” feels like a sprint, yet it’s never too much. This is the quickest two-and-a-half-hours you’ll ever spend.
It features some of the best lines in the entire series, from an operative calling Hunt/Cruise “a mind reading, shape shifting agent of chaos,” to Hunt/Cruise reminding his trusty team of Benji and Luther that “a nuclear bomb is something you bother me with.”
It debuts one of the franchise’s best anti-heroes with Pom Klementieff’s badass assassin Paris.
And its delivers a near-perfect 40-minute-or-so third act that is all white knuckles and held breath, including that daredevil motorcycle sequence, where you firmly and fully believe that Tom Cruise and Ethan Hunt are one and the same and just saved the damn day. Again.
I can’t wait for “Dead Reckoning, Part Two.”
Until then, I’m going back to photoshop to continue working on my IMF supercut that is nothing but Tom Cruise/Ethan Hunt running. Thankfully, “Dead Reckoning, Part One” continues that glorious tradition in spades.
This article appears in Jul 13-19, 2023.