Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023) Director: Christopher McQuarrie
“We live and die in the shadows, for those we hold close, for those we never meet…”
The seventh Tom Cruise Mission: Impossible film, is the first of a two-parter, with the sequel currently set to be released in 2025. Dead Reckoning Part One is the follow-up to the fan favorite in the series, 2018’s Fallout. It begins with a tense nautical scene a la The Hunt for Red October as a Russian stealth submarine, the Sevastopol, is testing its new highly advanced undetected artificial intelligence deep under the ice of the Bering Sea when they are suddenly spotted by a rival submarine, however computers begin running haywire and the Sevastopol accidentally fires upon itself. There didn’t appear to be any rival submarine in the vicinity after all, but weapons somehow malfunctioned and turned on the Sevastopol. A pair of twin keys which can be used to access the nascent artificial intelligence hub are then separated. What happened here? Who is the culprit of this mishap?
The pair of cruciform keys serve as the central Macguffin for this film as suddenly every government around the world launches a desperate search for the keys in order to harness the powerful new artificial intelligence technology, including IMF agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) who is given his new mission: to track down Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) since she killed a courier and apparently stole one of the two vital keys. There is a $50,000,000 reward for her head, but she has been captured by bounty hunters and taken somewhere deep in the Arabian Desert. However, in the course of a sandstorm shootout rescue operation, Ilsa is apparently killed, but we later learn she has secretly survived while protecting the key the whole time.
From the director of the CIA, Eugene Kittridge (Henry Czerny), we are given more information about this particular brand of artificial intelligence that was being tested by the Russian submarine Sevastopol. Known as “The Entity,” this is a sentient form of artificial intelligence that has been harvesting deep international state secrets for years, and building complex algorithms to outmaneuver humanity –it is the ultimate enemy. It operates like the ultimate computer virus, infecting the most dangerous technology around the world. It has now set its sights on the most secretive intelligence networks. Since every nation is looking to harness this entity, Ethan decides to go rogue from the IMF once again and track down the second key in order to destroy the entity, rather than acquire it for any one particular government. In short, technology cannot be trusted!
This sends Ethan on a completely covert mission to recover the second key with his friends from the previous films. His adventures include an extended airport heist sequence where he meets a thief named Grace (Hayley Atwell), and when she escapes, this is immediately followed by a wild handcuffed car chase through the streets of Rome, and pure chaos ensues as Ethan and his crew infiltrate a secret meeting in Venice hosted by none other than Alanna the “White Widow” (Vanessa Kirby) who first appeared in the previous film Fallout, alongside an old nemesis of Ethan’s named Gabriel (esai Morales), an elusive figure apparently in cahoots with The Entity as its chosen messenger. With numerous other secret agents closing in, the rogue IMF agents –including Ethan, the thief Grace, Benji (Simon Pegg), and Luther (Ving Rhames)—hatch a plot to impersonate Alana the “White Widow” using their trademark masks aboard the Orient Express on its way to Innsbruck. It features a memorable action sequence of Tom Cruise launching himself off a cliff on his motorcycle before parachuting onto a moving train which is run off a partially destroyed bridge moments later. It is a truly wild chain of events. And the film ends on a cliffhanger as Ethan, Grace, Benji, and Luther agree to track down the Sevastopol which is still at the bottom of the ocean in order to use the two conjoined keys to hopefully destroy The Entity.
While I thought the last few Mission: Impossible movies were really terrific action-adventure films all-around (Ghost Protocol, Rogue Nation, and Fallout), ultimately I was a bit disappointed with Dead Reckoning. It struck me as a confusing, convoluted, befuddling, overly complicated plot. I was unfortunately frustrated with this popcorn movie. It is salvaged only by a handful of fun adrenaline-pumping stunts and sequences (i.e. those iconic “cruise control” moments). In particular, the character of Grace was entirely frivolous –she is ceaselessly rescued by Ethan only to prove herself to be a repeatedly untrustworthy character throughout the film—however, the broader theme of uncontrolled artificial intelligence run amok across the globe is timely and well-taken.
Credits:
- Director: Christopher McQuarrie
- Written by: Christopher McQuarrie and Erik Jendresen
- Produced by: Tom Cruise and Christopher McQuarrie
- Starring:
- Tom Cruise…..Ethan Hunt
- Hayley Atwell…..Grace, a questionably loyal thief
- Ving Rhames…..Luther Stickell
- Simon Pegg…..Benji Dunn (Pegg also voices The Entity)
- Rebecca Ferguson…..Ilsa Faust, who previously appeared in Rogue Nation and Fallout
- Vanessa Kirby…..Alanna Mitsopolis “The White Widow”
- Esai Morales…..Gabriel, a nemesis of Ethan and mysterious ally of The Entity
- Pom Klementieff…..Paris, a French assassin who works for Gabriel
- Henry Czerny…..Eugene Kittridge, director of the CIA
- Cinematography: Fraser Taggart
- Edited by: Eddie Hamilton
- Music by: Lorne Balfe
- Production Companies: Skydance, TC Productions, C2 Motion Picture Group (this was the first Mission: Impossible film since MI3 not to use J.J. Abrams’s company Bad Robot for production)
- Distribution Company: Paramount Pictures
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