Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning - Part One

Almost at the end of this tremendously entertaining movie, there’s a moment where the bad guy is cooly standing around, waiting to be beaten up by Ethan Hunt. The thing is, he is cooly standing atop the Orient Express as it steams through the Alps. It’s not the first time a train-top fight has been staged, and it’s not the first one in a Summer 2023 franchise movie, but the coolness and the chutzpah is at minimum levels, and the franchise has easily surpassed its nearest competitor, the Bond films. It doesn’t really matter though because it’s so much fun.

A lot earlier, at the end of the epically preposterous pre-title sequences, we see “A Tom Cruise Production” and then the name “Tom Cruise”… and he is famous in this film for being a Producer who shouted at people for ignoring Covid restrictions back when this film was being made. Now, while most people have forgotten about the lockdown and cinema is facing a new crisis, Cruise is famous for having six times done the stunt that dominates this film: a motorcycle jump off a mountain followed by a parachute jump… onto the Orient Express as to steams its way through the Alps.

The plot involves an AI “entity” which has become independent, and which takes out a submarine in that long pre-title sequence. The CIA are not happy, and are even less happy when they discover that Kittridge is the head of the Impossible Mission Force, the group of people who answer directly to the President, are unknown to everyone else, and who look after the interests of the greater good. It’s quaint that these characters are motivated simply by loyalty and friendless, and their hapless devotion to overcoming hopeless odds is what gives this franchise and this movie such a tremendous amount of heart.

It almost doesn’t matter but the gang are after a metal key which is in two sections. When the sections are joined together the key unlocks… something. This is a film not just about friendship and loyalty, but about who knows what and the value of people who know certain facts—especially if they are the only ones who know. The “this message will self-destruct…” sequence is there, of course—and Hunt’s stakes this time involve a figure from his past, Ilsa (Rebecca Ferguson). When Benji (Simon Pegg) turns up with Luther (Ving Rhames) the classic cat-and-mouse trail through an airport provides a load of classic spycraft adventure, this time with a thief who doesn’t know why she’s stealing something. This is Grace (Hayley Altwell), whose association with Hunt involves some of the most bewildering scenes this film has to offer (a car chase involving an old Fiat 50 and a Humvee).

There is that incredible train sequence, but the motorcycle jump is genuinely audacious…and the knowledge that there’s no visual effects makes it even more impressive. The thing about it is that it flows organically from the improvised race-against-time plot. A train chase always seems planned, and fights on top of trains are fun as there’s the peril of pylons and tunnels that force the fight to stop every so often as both protagonist and antagonist hit the deck. 

In the end the reason for the film being in two parts makes sense. This part is about the key, and what the stakes are. The next part, already promising more stunts and hopefully not too much derailed by the strikes, looks like it will be a solid big-screen epic. For me the story is good enough to sustain a small screen but the stunts deserve a really big space.