Tom Cruise has accepted the mission of saving Hollywood’s summer as he did last summer with the classic action film Top Gun: Maverick. I’m here to tell you that Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part One, notwithstanding strikes, has completed that mission as one of the best action movies ever, arguably even better than Maverick.
Although too many action set pieces litter the movie’s landscape, each one is a work of art that tops similar ones even from the MI canon. If Cruise’s Ethan Hunt has ridden a motorcycle before, he has outdone himself here as he catapults over a brick wall like Steve McQueen from The Great Escape or drives over a cliff in Norway saving himself like no one else.
If you think you’ve seen the best fight scenes inside and above a train, change your mind when Ethan Hunt tries to save a runaway train while he fights off the bad guys--an homage to Hitchcock’s North by Northwest and the myriad other train fights in action pics.
As everyone wants to get two pieces of a key to the power of an AI that promises to destroy the world, a Hitch MacGuffin if there ever was one, Hunt has time enough for not one but two and maybe three attractive women who are just as tough as he.
Softening the hard exterior of his hero, director Christopher McQuarrie, has given Cruise a chance to exercise those acting chops separate from most of the stunts he does himself (he must be self-insured!). The women mainly played by Hayley Atwell (she joins IMF) and Rebecca Ferguson are attractive and strong, and he is strong and vulnerable, traits that help make this one of cinema’s outstanding thrillers.
If you get a chance to see commentary on his motorcycle jump, you’ll appreciate how the film preserves the old hands-on tradition with little apparent CGI. How Cruise and McQuarrie will top themselves in Part Two is anyone’s delicious guess.
Like Cruise himself, Ethan Hunt is aging and perhaps ready to give the mantle to someone like Atwell. But then again, tell that to 80-year-old Harrison Ford.
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts NPR’s It’s Movie Time and hosts Cinema Classics as well as podcasts Back Talk and Double Take out of WCBE 90.5 FM. Contact him at JohnDeSando52@gmail.com
