Film Review: Tom Cruise Delivers Big Action With ‘Mission: Impossible —Dead Reckoning Part 1’

Pop culture fans have a way of building idols … and then tearing them down. Oh, how the mighty have fallen dates back to the Bible, but the expression certainly applies to 21st century Hollywood. Movie stars have mostly faded away and been replaced with IP (intellectual property). It’s not a Daisy Ridley and Oscar Isaac movie. It’s a Star Wars movie. It’s not a Chris Pratt and Dave Bautista movie. It’s a Marvel movie. Familiar faces, yes, but it’s the iconic characters, not the performers, who sell tickets in 2023.

But, every rule has its exception. One movie star who has not toppled from his pedestal and shattered into a million pieces of marble is Tom Cruise. His work is so consistent that pop culture critics must dredge his personal life to find something negative to say about the man (his devotion to Scientology being a favorite go-to). Last year, he set the box office on fire with Top Gun: Maverick, the highest grossing film of 2022 with $1.45 billion in worldwide ticket sales. Clearly the movie-going public wants to be entertained, and Tom Cruise is an expert at doing just that.

With the release of Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part 1, Cruise unleashes another action juggernaut for film fans who’ve been underwhelmed by The Flash, Elemental and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. While the narrative is a bit of a patchwork quilt and more muddled than previous installments, you come to a Mission Impossible film for the characters and the action set pieces. Thanks to Tom Cruise’s daredevil spirit and director Chris McQuarrie’s impeccable staging and filming, this seventh installment delivers everything audiences are hoping for.

The plot is standard Mission Impossible fare. A bad guy is in pursuit of a doomsday device that can wreak cyber-havoc through an AI-driven computer virus. The good guys must find the device first. Naturally some mercenary types who would like to sell the device to the highest bidder enter the fray. Some good guys wind up being bad guys; some bad guys wind up serving the greater good. Like I said, it’s a standard MI plotline.

Some of my fellow critics have used words like “convoluted” or “contrived” to describe the narrative of Dead Reckoning Part 1. To their credit, the film does feel like it was reverse engineered: locations and action set pieces were conceived first, and then the storylines were created to connect those dots. But, Mission Impossible films have never trafficked in realism. They have a machine that builds perfect masks of people’s faces, and we’re nitpicking the script over inconsistencies and plot holes? If you’re interested in a gritty, realistic spy tale, watch the exemplary Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011). Dead Reckoning Part 1 has different aspirations.

Over the past fifteen years, the Mission Impossible franchise has out James Bonded the James Bond films. Exotic locations, killer technology, sexy female spies and the like were staples of Ian Fleming’s breezy playboy spy films. When Daniel Craig was given his cinematic license to kill, Bond turned dark and dour, and the Mission Impossible films blew a breath of fresh air into the stale world of self-important espionage thrillers. Where Bond plays it straight, Dead Reckoning tips a wink to the occasional absurd plot twist and isn’t afraid to throw in some well-timed laughs.

Much has been made (and appropriately so) about Tom Cruise’s motorcycle jump off a mountain that was featured so prominently in the trailers for the film. The sequence was filmed during the first week of the production. If Cruise didn’t make it out in one piece, production could be suspended or (in a worst case scenario) cancelled altogether.

That said, the motorcycle jump may not even be the best action sequence in the film. There’s a bravura car chase through the streets of Rome with Cruise and co-star Hayley Atwell attempting to drive a yellow Fiat with a manual transmission while hand-cuffed to each other. And there’s a train derailment sequence that may be the most clever action sequence of 2023.

For the first time in the history of the Mission Impossible film franchise, the words “Part One” appear in the title. However, unlike so many Marvel films over the years, Dead Reckoning doesn’t play out like the introduction to another, potentially better, film. It tells a complete story. One that audiences should love when it opens in theaters on July 12th.