Dead Reckoning mostly succeeds, partly because of the rest of the crew and cast. But mostly because of Tom Cruise.
Dead Reckoning mostly succeeds, partly because of the rest of the crew and cast. But mostly because of Tom Cruise.
T he first thing theatrical patrons of Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One see, before even the movie itself, is a thank-you message from Christopher McQuarrie, its writer-director, and Tom Cruise, its star. It is well earned: The duo have taken the now decades-old Mission: Impossible franchise to unexpected and somewhat improbable commercial and critical heights, and they deserve to be front of mind as moviegoers enjoy the thrills that unfold. But it also serves as a tribute to Tom Cruise, now 61 yet possibly now the most important — the only? — true movie star left in a cinematic environment driven increasingly by preexisting brands.
Yes, Mission: Impossible is one such brand, having emerged from a popular 1960s–’70s TV show. But the films themselves have changed a great deal since Brian De Palma’s 1996 initial entry, a taut action thriller heavily laden with his style. Watching it quickly before Dead Reckoning (as I did) makes this especially clear. In subsequent entries, directors likewise bent the final product in their stylistic visions: John Woo in the second with his doves, J. J. Abrams in the third with his lens flares. Certain things they cannot avoid, however: twisty plotting, face masks, and cool stunts — usually at the climax, often atop vehicles.
The true constant, however, the thing that makes the movies work, is Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt. And not just because he’s always running in them. He is not only the main character, but also the only one featured in every film (Ving Rhames, runner-up, gets a cameo in Ghost Protocol). The return of Henry Czerny as Eugene Kittridge, head of the IMF (the off-the-books spy agency for which Hunt works) for the first time since the De Palma era emphasizes how the franchise and Cruise himself have changed in the interim. Cruise was still the star then, but he was cocky, occasionally frantic. Now, he is confident and competent, the franchise’s gyroscope. Dead Reckoning’s triumphs (of which there are many) and its defects (of which there are a few) depend mostly on him. McQuarrie has abandoned most stylistic pretension in favor of an unadorned craft, all the better to display the finesse of Tom Cruise.
They are not entirely alone in generating the franchise’s appeal. An appealing cast helps. In Dead Reckoning, there is Rebecca Ferguson’s impeccably named and skillfully realized Ilsa Faust, returning from two previous installments; Simon Pegg’s Benji Dunn (harried and comical), around since the third; and Rhames (affable and reliable) and Czerny (having lost none of his solemn gravitas). In this entry there are also newcomers Grace (Hayley Atwell), a wily pickpocket at home in thievery but unaccustomed, as yet, to the global stakes of the IMF; and the mysterious Gabriel (Esai Morales), a figure out of Hunt’s heretofore little-explored past, returned to menace him once again. Other assorted newcomers and returners all play off Cruise well, either as allies, foils, or something in between.
There must also be a plot to hang all this on, and it is interesting enough: the globe-trotting pursuit of two key items that grant control of the “Entity,” a self-aware artificial intelligence. Its powers are now sought by various interests, including the U.S. government, for their own gain. Meanwhile, Gabriel and his agents serve the Entity itself, following its desires and aided by its designs. Only Hunt and his IMF crew, tasked initially only with securing the items necessary to control the Entity, wish to destroy it, fearing its capabilities. The threat is at once perhaps timelier and more nebulous than in previous entries. Many questions about the Entity, and its connection with Gabriel in particular, are left unanswered; one hopes for answers in Part Two.
With the stakes established, however, the thrills follow effectively. At their best, they balance adrenaline with a kind of witty creativity that, for example, sees Hunt stuck with — and frustrated by — Grace in a high-speed chase through Rome, or Hunt wondering at what point a long uphill motorcycle drive will start going downhill (answer: never — it is the prelude to an incredible stunt involving parachuting off said motorcycle and onto a moving train). But Dead Reckoning is not averse to more straightforwardly heart-racing action, as in a gravity-defying sequence in a falling train. And in a stunning, Venice-set episode, emotion and action are one.
Cruise’s Hunt is, naturally at the center of most of this — mostly to Dead Reckoning’s advantage, even if it can sometimes seem a bit forced or comical. Apparently for plot contrivance alone, other characters withhold information from Hunt, regret it, and are chastised by him. A pair of intelligence agents tasked with tracking Hunt down follow him across the world yet balk at taking him in at key instances, apparently won over by his sheer charisma, and engage in a fairly meta discourse about how he and his team are always “going rogue.” “What if they always have a good reason?” one agent asks his partner. The answer: They do. In Cruise we must trust. Even the way the Entity and its surrogates operate — guided by algorithms, calculations, and predictions — appears set in opposition to the improvisational spontaneity that the IMF team, Hunt especially, offers as its redeeming asset. An overemphasis of this asset, however, leads to the movie’s most unbelievable moment: a Cruise ex machina that will test even the most securely suspended disbeliefs.
Such moments of excess and artifice aside, Dead Reckoning succeeds, surely in part because of McQuarrie and the rest of the crew and cast. But mostly because of Tom Cruise. A deeply weird man with an apparent death-wish (his stunts are now no longer so much death-defying as they are death-taunting), Cruise has decided to spend the rest of his career in service of pure entertainment that seems at once a throwback and excitingly cutting-edge. Last year, in Top Gun: Maverick, he may have saved theatrical moviegoing. In Dead Reckoning, he has merely perpetuated it. That is a lot to attribute to one man. Unless that one man is Tom Cruise.