Movie Review: Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One
I can’t say much more than this about Mission Impossible 7.
It’s a very watchable movie at least. I’ll give it that. Like the other Tom Cruise productions in the franchise it is fast-paced, high stakes, and full of zany death-defying stunts. It even has a uniquely cool villain in the form of a mysterious super AI called “The Entity,” which is timely and a genuinely interesting challenge for Ethan Hunt.
The problem is that the concept isn’t well-leveraged. As a villain, the AI is sorely lacking in motive and personality. It has a few neat feats but is otherwise overshadowed by a generic “evil for evil’s sake” bad guy played moderately well by Esai Morales. When it comes time to add new layers of danger to Ethan’s challenges or kill off a core member of his team, instead of utilizing the fascinating new villain they just do improbable fist fights and cheesy coincidences. It lessened the impact and with a large number of side characters and subplots it all felt bloated at over 2 and a half hours runtime for a part one of a double feature.
Dead Reckoning has some good special effects and set pieces but the last three movies were all better in that regard. I give credit to an aging Tom Cruise for his wild stunt work. Newcomer Hayley Atwell is also a breath of fresh air as a thief who reluctantly joins the team. I loved the car chase scene with her that amusingly subverted expectations a bit with her not being a good driver and angrily forcing Ethan to drive while they were handcuffed together. There’s some fun stuff in here and I’d say if you like the franchise it’s worth a watch. Here’s hoping part two will blow us away.
Grade: B-
