Mission: Impossible- Dead Reckoning Part One is the latest entry into Tom Cruise’s longest running franchise. Christopher McQuarrie directs and shares script credit with Erik Jendresen. Tom Cruise reprises the role of Ehtan Hunt. He is joined by Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, Rebecca Ferguson, Vanessa Kirby, and Hayley Atwell. Esai Morales plays a pretty chilling villain named Gabriel and is helped by henchwoman, Pom Klementieff. There are all kinds of familiar names in the cast. I guess I should also mention Cary Elwes.
This time, Hunt and Company have to stay ahead am artificial intelligence creatively designated the Entity. IMF (Impossible Mission Force) must regain half of a key that will lead them to a means to destroy the Entity. The Entity has gathered enough loyalty and intelligence to give everyone a run for the money. This story makes the bold claim that this will be Ethan’s toughest mission.
The problem is that it also seems to be the most absurd mission the IMF has ever tackled. The story doesn’t always make sense. The stunts are almost too outrageous and require an outlandish amount of suspension of disbelief. Fortunately, it is a very talented cast, and many scenes did work pretty well. Cruise does remain as compelling as ever in the lead role, and one can almost forget he is now in his sixties. Rhames and Pegg are quite good too, and I would not object to them getting more screen time in the next installment.
I did find some of the action scenes such as a car chase in Rome just seemed to go on and on. The stunts were pretty well choreographed for the most part, but I would have appreciated a little more opportunity to catch my breath and see Ethan move onto the next leg a little sooner.
Overall, the film manages to still be pretty entertaining in spite of some significant flaws. As mentioned before, the cast was well chosen, and there was a bit of real suspense. The film does seem to run a little longer than I would have preferred, and some of the editing choices were a little questionable. As much as I complained about the long action scenes, there were also times that the change of locations was a little too jarring. The flow and pace of the story just seemed a little inconsistent at times.
I guess my reaction was a little more mixed than I expected, but I would still say that it turned out to be a pretty good time and nowhere near to scraping the bottle of the cinematic barrel.
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