‘Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One’ Might Be Bloated, But its Thrills Are the Stuff of A-Grade Action [Review]

Here’s the latest “Mission: Impossible” film, this one titled ‘Dead Reckoning Part One’ it’s the seventh film of the franchise.

If the last three movies (‘Ghost Protocol, Rogue Nation’ and ‘Fallout’) kept getting bolder with each passing film, this one is perfectly content in playing it safe and giving the audience what they expect.

Cruise kept trying to one-up himself in the last three movies, reinventing the way action could be shot and felt, but this one feels more like a greatest hits package. We’ll take it.

That doesn’t mean ‘Dead Reckoning – Part One’ isn’t a highlight of the summer blockbuster season — I mean, has there been anything else? but the film clocks in at 2 hours 43 minutes this time around and although you barely feel the runtime, it could have used a few snips here and there.

Tom Cruise is back as Ethan Hunt, and the government wants to shut him down. He’ll have to keep breaking the rules of the game if he doesn’t want to get caught. And, of course, he won’t. Hunt is a character that is not meant to be humanized, he’s practically a superhero at this point with his death-defying stunts and notoriously bright ways of always escaping unscathed.

The main villain in ‘Dead Reckoning’ is A.I. and I doubt director-writer Christopher McQuarrie expected his film to be so prescient and relevant to the times we live in. The super software is always one step ahead of everything, predicting what will happen even before it occurs, which turns out to be a major headache for Hunt and his gang.

To destroy the software, Hunt needs to find a key that’s been separated into two entities, but the problem is that everyone from the CIA to Esai Morales’ baddie are trying to get it.

The result, although filled with these ingenious action set pieces, can sometimes feel bloated. The amount of exposition in this film is also vastly overdone. We keep having characters explaining why they’re doing what they’re doing and the potential fallout of those said plans.

The cast is great. Cruise looks effortlessly cool, wearing his aviator shades in multiple scenes, running on airport rooftops and even motorcycle jumping off a cliff. Meanwhile, his gang of regulars like Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg and Rebecca Ferguson have chemistry to burn.

Added in for good measure is Hayley Atwell, cast as a master thief. She catches Hunt’s eye, he keeps telling her she’s in danger, but she won’t listen, she was hired by a mysterious buyer to find the key. Atwell is playfully vibrant in the role, she’s a great addition to the franchise.

Christopher McQuarrie and Erik Jendresen’s screenplay doesn’t delve deep enough into the dangers of A.I. and that’s a real shame because they had the opportunity to probe serious questions about it. But what did you expect from a ‘Mission: Impossible’ movie? One tends to check their brain at the door when watching these spy flicks.

We’re here for the action, and in that regard, ‘Dead Reckoning’ delivers it in spades. One sequence has Ethan fighting two villains in a tight street corridor, and the way the camera manages to shoot this tightly constructed sequence is damn-near impressive. Ditto a car and mouse chase through an airport that has Hunt continuously trying to escape CIA agents while chasing Atwell’s thief.

However, it’s in the film’s final 45 minutes that the soon-to-be-iconic set piece take place. There’s Hunt’s speeding motorcycle jumping off a Norwegian cliff and landing onboard a train. Things escalate from there, in a brilliant pulse-pounding fashion, especially when the train starts sliding off a destroyed bridge, one car at a time.

The thrills are fashionably spread throughout ‘Dead Reckoning’ and they never feel compromised by CGI. The film shames Marvel’s cartoonish thrills for elaborately staged practical effects. Much of ‘Dead Reckoning’ was captured on camera and that’s what makes these films such a joy to behold. [B/B+]