Worth Mentioning - A New Day Brings a New Burden

We watch several movies a week. Every Friday, we'll talk a little about some of the movies we watched that we felt were Worth Mentioning. 

Cody returns to the theatre for the latest Ethan Hunt adventure.

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – DEAD RECKONING PART ONE (2023)

I’m not completely sure what the first movie I ever saw in the theatre was. I know I went to a screening of Beetlejuice when I was 4, but I don’t know if I had been in a theatre before that and just don’t remember it. What is certain is that theatres soon became a home away from home for me. I would head out to cinemas on a regular basis, checking out any movie I was even slightly interested in. My movie-going eventually slowed down a bit when I started going on international travels – but I never would have imagined there would ever be a point in my life when I would go a full year without being in a theatre, let alone multiple years. That’s exactly what happened when the pandemic hit. I started skipping theatrical showings of movies in an effort to avoid the virus, wanting to protect myself and those around me that have weakened immune systems. And then almost four years had passed. I wasn’t in total quarantine that whole time, but I have been very cautious. I did take the risk of going to a concert earlier this year – then I tested positive for Covid right after, so that didn’t work out. I’ve been missing going to the theatre. I’ve been craving theatre popcorn. And this month, I couldn’t take it any longer. I had to get back to the movies.

I made my long-awaited return to theatres by heading out to a showing of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One. And sitting in a theatre (and eating theatre popcorn) was just as wonderful as I remembered it being. It was great to be back. The movie was really good, too.

Sure, I could nitpick. I could express disappointment that Mission: Impossible is no longer the director’s showcase series it was back in the day when each installment had a different director at the helm. Brian De Palma, John Woo, J.J. Abrams, Brad Bird. Now the last three movies in a row have been directed by Christopher McQuarrie, who is also directing the second half of this Dead Reckoning two-parter. So the franchise is split in two: the director’s showcase four and the McQuarrie four. But McQuarrie does make these movies very well, so I can’t be too disappointed that each separate movie hasn’t been filtered through the vision of a different director. And I could grumble about the lack of variety in the Impossible Mission Force teams assembled by our hero Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise), as in the McQuarrie era he only has tech experts Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames) and Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg) on his team, then anyone else in the story just comes along for the ride. But we do meet interesting characters in these movies, even if they’re not IMF agents. Like Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson), who first appeared in Rogue Nation, returned for Fallout, and now shows up again in Dead Reckoning Part One. She was a great addition to the franchise. Introduced in Fallout and returning here is arms dealer Alanna, the “White Widow” (played by Vanessa Kirby). She was an intriguing addition. Newly introduced in this one is Grace (Hayley Atwell) – a pickpocket who finds herself in the middle of Ethan’s latest mission. Definitely no complaints about that character. Atwell is awesome. So I can go along with how the Mission: Impossible movies are progressing these days, even if I would have made different choices.

Back in the ‘90s, De Palma’s Mission: Impossible about going to be followed by Oliver Stone’s Mission: Impossible II, which would have found Ethan and his team going up against a supercomputer. They just couldn’t quite crack the story... with one major issue being that the second half of the script took place in Ethan’s subconscious, as the supercomputer found a way to infiltrate his mind and he had to mentally fight it off. Stone left the project and was replaced by John Woo, who delivered a Mission: Impossible II that had nothing to do with a supercomputer. But twenty-five-ish years later, McQuarrie and co-writer Erik Jendresen have sort of circled back to that abandoned idea for this Dead Reckoning duo. Thankfully, Part One (and hopefully Part Two) has nothing to do about a supercomputer hacking into Ethan’s brain. Instead, the story finds that a Russian submarine was equipped with an AI defense and navigation system called The Entity... an AI system that gained sentience and sabotaged the submarine. Now the sub lies at the bottom of the sea somewhere while The Entity prowls the Internet, investigating, learning. And now it’s targeting intelligence networks. Which is where the IMF gets involved. The Entity can be controlled with a cruciform key that is currently split in two parts that have gotten loose in the world. Various governments and organizations are hoping to gain control of The Entity and use it for their own purposes. Realizing the danger of this AI, Ethan plans to destroy it. But first he has to get his hands on both halves of the key, then figure out where to use the key. There are some twists and turns regarding The Entity, but that’s the basic gist of it, or at least how it seems for most of the movie.

So Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One is about characters racing, fighting, and scheming to obtain the cruciform key. Our heroes want to destroy The Entity. The White Widow wants to sell the key. A terrorist called Gabriel (Esai Morales), who has a connection to Ethan’s past, and his lackey Paris (Pom Klementieff) want to help The Entity achieve global domination. Ethan is being tracked by intelligence agents Briggs (Shea Whigham) and Degas (Greg Tarzan Davis). And behind the scenes is Ethan’s associate Eugene Kittridge, with Henry Czerny reprising a role he hadn’t played since the first movie.

The film is packed with fun sequences. A shootout in a sandstorm (the second time a sandstorm has been featured in these movies, following Ghost Protocol). A foot chase and intense fights in Venice. A car chase through the streets of Rome – which had humorous touches that reminded me of the Roger Moore era of the James Bond franchise. A suspenseful sequence in an airport seemed to go on a bit too long, with a bomb defusing bit that wasn’t necessary. The big “riding a motorcycle off a cliff” stunt also wasn’t exactly necessary, but Cruise likes to risk his life doing stunts for these movies and we love him for it. There’s another suspenseful sequence on a train that seems to last an eternity, and the fight that follows on the roof of the train is something we’ve seen before. But the payoff is when the train goes crashing off a bridge and Ethan and Grace have to make their way through multiple train cars before they plummet over the edge. That sequence was worth the wait.

My biggest issue with Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One is really just that there’s a bit too much of it. With a running time of 163 minutes, it’s too long... but really, that’s the sort of running time I expected going in, because it’s trendy to make movies ridiculously long these days. Sometimes longer running times can fly by, but I didn’t find this to be one of those times. There were several moments when I started to feel the movie was too long, especially during the train sequence (before the crash). There were plenty of scenes that felt like they could have moved more quickly or could have been trimmed down. And there was way too much talk about The Entity. I don’t know if McQuarrie, Jendresen, and Cruise thought the audience wouldn’t understand how much of a threat this thing is or if they’re truly terrified of AI, but the movie spends too much time telling us we should be worried about what The Entity is capable of. Characters have conversations about this thing that go on and on. Movies of this type should not have this much dialogue that’s focused on the latest MacGuffin. Just establish what the thing is and why it’s a threat and let’s get on with it.

Dead Reckoning Part One has a satisfying conclusion, even though there’s still another movie’s worth of story to be told (and another movie’s worth of action sequences to be brought to the screen). I had fun watching it in the theatre and I’m very glad I went out to see it. But I do hope Part Two will be a bit shorter and will have much less talk about how scary The Entity is.