Ethan Hunt and his IMF team must track down a dangerous weapon before it falls into the wrong hands.
Tom Cruise was 34 when he starred in the original “Mission: Impossible” in 1996. He is now 61 years old and shows no signs of slowing down. He is notorious for doing all of his own stunts, and in the latest installment, he performs more incredible stunts, including jumping off a motorcycle from a mountaintop (I’m not giving anything away here since it appears in the trailer) and various other exciting maneuvers.
In “Dead Reckoning Part One,” Cruise’s Ethan Hunt must team up with his go-to crew, Benji (Simon Pegg), Luther (Ving Rhames), and Ilsa (Rebecca Ferguson), as they are faced with a deadly new threat unlike anything they have ever encountered; a terrifying, AI consciousness called “The Entity.” It can predict a person’s actions and words just by studying them briefly. It can manipulate everything and everyone around Ethan and his crew, leaving them vulnerable and making their spy-tech realistic latex face masks redundant.
As Ethan takes on his latest mission, a face from his past appears, Gabriel (Esai Morales), a powerful terrorist and Ethan’s adversary. We also learn that to fully control The Entity, a mysterious cruciform key with two pieces that lock together like a puzzle box is required, but what exactly does the key open? That answer is vague and will be answered when “Dead Reckoning Part Two” is released on June 28th, 2024.
The cryptic key is what Ethan and Gabriel are both after, and we discover that Gabriel was the deciding factor in Ethan joining the Impossible Mission Force, as he killed someone near and dear to him. Who? Again, that is not revealed but will be in Part Two.
Actor Esai Morales infuses Gabriel with a confident arrogance, always sure that things will go according to his plan because he has The Entity behind him, and 99% of the time, he is correct, but thankfully Ethan comes along and throws a massive spanner in the works. Ethan’s hatred of Gabriel spans decades, and their shared detestation of each other boils over during a fight scene near the film’s end, but Gabriel escapes, leaving you foaming at the mouth as you want Ethan to kick his ass.
Hayley Atwell makes a nice addition to the usually exclusive IMF crew as Grace, a small-time thief who starts out working for Gabriel but then changes her allegiance when she realizes just how ruthless he is and that he will kill anybody who gets in his way of obtaining the key. Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, and Rebecca Ferguson all make a welcome return in their respective roles, and Henry Czerny, who played Ethan’s boss, Eugene Kittridge, in the original “Mission: Impossible,” comes back as the former director of the IMF, once again, chasing after Ethan.
The action takes place all around the globe, from Rome to Norway to the Austrian Swiss Alps, and never lets up. Director Christopher McQuarrie returns having helmed both “Rogue Nation” (my personal favorite of the series) and “Fallout,” and it’s apparent both he and Cruise have an excellent working relationship. A director must always trust in his leading man and vice versa, and here, as with the previous two installments, the action set-pieces are exhilarating, with Cruise performing one of his biggest and most dangerous stunts ever.
Cruise is the American James Bond, a super-spy who cares more about the world and his team than his own life and has come close to death many times as a result. The final scene, which takes place onboard the Orient Express, is thrilling and breathtaking, and there are so many plot twists you’re left holding your breath as you try to untangle every one of them; add to that, you then realize you have to wait a whole year until Part Two wraps everything up and based on how Part One played out, I can only imagine its sequel will be even bigger.
I get the feeling that Part Two could very well be Tom Cruise’s final outing as Ethan Hunt, by then he will be 62 and with his untitled SpaceX Project and a rumored sequel to his 2014 sci-fi hit, “Edge of Tomorrow,” titled “Live Die Repeat and Repeat,” waiting to be produced, he could most certainly pop up from time to time in a cameo, but I feel as the years go by, it’s time to hand the reigns over to a younger lead, possibly even bring Jeremy Renner back once he has recovered from his accident. For now, though, sit back and enjoy one of the best Mission: Impossible films, and if it’s doable, see it on the biggest screen you can find, you won’t regret it.
In Theaters Wednesday, July 12th
