Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One

At some point during the history of the Mission: Impossible movies, the franchise shifted from distinct and individual auteur exercises to its current iteration, which could be alternately titled The Tom Cruise Stunt Show. It happened right around the fourth film, Ghost Protocol, which brought director Brad Bird on board for what acted as a total franchise reset. The director was now working around the broader sense of personality of the movies, and a new focus on Cruise performing his own death-defying exploits. Each film since has had centerpieces: Ghost Protocol's Burj Khalifa climb, hanging off an Airbus A400M in Rogue Nation, and the HALO jump in Fallout.

Dead Reckoning Part One follows this tradition, with Cruise riding a motorbike off the side of a cliff for the film’s big marketing moment. It’s as incredible as it seems on the poster; there’s just not much in other action films that captures the immediacy and organic thrill of watching this 60-year-old man throw any good sense of caution to the wind in the name of an authentic experience at the movies. But it also reiterates the true magic of both the franchise’s past and present when that stunt is almost a footnote to the rest of the film: a breathless blast of an action-adventure summer blockbuster that consistently reinvigorates your belief in the power of such a thing. That it’s not quite superior to the absolute best entries speaks to how exceptional these movies really are.

Dead Reckoning Part One feels like a flex. Sandwiched between the unrelenting thrill ride that was Fallout and a Part Two finale that is sure to escalate itself to gonzo heights, this one feels satisfied to effortlessly deliver on the expectations of an M:I movie. It has expectedly gripping and largely practical set-pieces — a car chase through the streets of Rome here, a brawl atop a runaway train there — but it also slightly tones down the extravagance for something that finds a gratifying compromise between high-octane action and the grounded espionage that’s more in line with Brian De Palma’s 1996 film.

In fact, director Christopher McQuarrie (continuing his reign of the series after Rogue Nation and Fallout) does a lot to specifically hark back to the methodical, juicy pulp of De Palma’s version, both in craft and in story (Henry Czerny is even back as Impossible Mission Force Director Kittridge from that film in a major part). Cinematographer Fraser Taggart gives the camera the most involvement it’s seen since that entry, not only in the action but more so in the dialogue. Even the smallest conversations are thrilling, full of wacky Dutch angles and gliding pans, which is an important aspect for a movie that throws a serious amount of exposition at the viewer, more than this series is used to.

The script (co-written by McQuarrie and Erik Jendresen) isn’t the sharpest these movies have seen, adhering to a long history of movies with evil AI antagonists, and it is prone to getting the complex loyalties and backstabbings of a large cast of characters just a little muddled. But it soars when it comes to broad spectacle and individual sequences, and it feels pointed that Cruise of all people is fighting an omnipresent, inescapable algorithm.

That cast he’s surrounded by helps to sustain the momentum in moments where it seems like the bottom could fall out. As usual, you come for the action, but you stay for the committed and rich performances. Cruise is the ultimate leading action star, and your regular returning players like Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, and Rebecca Ferguson all help to imbue the globe-trotting antics with a serious amount of impassioned credibility. New additions to the cast like Hayley Atwell as a pickpocket virtuoso, Pom Klementieff as an unwavering assassin, and Shea Whigham as the coolest guy to show up in movies all fit comfortably within the larger framework of the film’s confident approach to world-saving espionage action.

Even at 163 minutes, there’s so much crammed in that threatens to make Dead Reckoning Part One feel at once overstuffed and overfamiliar. So it’s a credit to the film that, even as the third- or fourth-best of the series, it’s such an exceptional piece of entertainment, one to serve as a reminder that we can and should expect more from our ultra expensive tentpole franchises. This is Mission: Impossible as you know it, but also as you’ve come to love it. Cruise and McQuarrie play the hits like you’re hearing them for the first time.