Review: Mission Impossible - Dead Reckoning: Part One

Image courtesy of Paramount Pictures.

Tom Cruise continues to defy gravity and, much like Dorian Gray, aging in "Mission Impossible - Dead Reckoning: Part One," an exhilarating and breathless summer blockbuster with almost nonstop forward momentum, much like its star. Last summer, Cruise was credited with saving the moviegoing experience with the well-liked and financially successful "Top Gun: Maverick." He just might do it again this summer with this film.

The plotting in "Dead Reckoning" - and I find it amusing that part one of what one might suppose would be a two-part finale (it apparently isn't and Cruise intends to keep doing this indefinitely) would run a whopping two hours and 49 minutes - is so labyrinthine that explaining it all would be a fool's errand. 

Regardless, summarizing the picture would involve discussing how a Russian submarine being sunk at the film's beginning has something to do with a dangerous piece of AI known as The Entity, which has become sentient and, therefore, desired by all the world's nations, which see it as a weapon that could result in their world dominance.

Naturally, Ethan Hunt (Cruise) and his team - consisting these days of the characters played by Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, and Rebecca Ferguson - are called in to obtain the two keys that control The Entity - or something to that effect - and must aim to keep it out of the hands of a number of dangerous individuals, most notably a figure from Ethan's past known as Gabriel (Esai Morales).

I'm sure that more of Ethan's connection to Gabriel, what The Entity is capable of, and how a new character - a thief named Grace (Hayley Atwell) who gets added to IMF - fits in with all of this will be explored more in part two, but suffice it to say that what makes "Dead Reckoning" so compelling is a combination of utilizing Cruise's charisma and the slate of great character actors in the film (which also includes Cary Elwes, Vanessa Kirby, Shea Whigham, and Henry Czerny), the film's exotic locales, and the incredible set pieces, of which three in particular stand out.

The first is a chase scene through the streets of Venice that rivals the recent Moroccan one in the Indiana Jones film. Cruise and Atwell attempt to elude a villain in a tank-like vehicle while driving a tiny Fiat in a sequence that is as funny as anything I've seen in any recent comedy. There's also the cliff-jumping sequence involving Cruise and a motorcycle that has been advertised in the trailers and an incredible sequence in which a group of characters try to escape a train that is plummeting off a blown out track.

I've long hoped that Cruise might one day return to the adventurous roles that he once took on - such as "Born on the Fourth of July," "Magnolia," or "Eyes Wide Shut" - but it seems that expensive blockbuster films such as this one are what he enjoys doing. And to give him and the filmmakers credit - along with the recent, brilliantly choreographed John Wick sequel, "Dead Reckoning" is among the best of its kind in recent memory. As far as summer blockbusters go, this latest "Mission Impossible" stands tall.