Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, the seventh film in the franchise, sees the Impossible Mission Force deal with both Ethan Hunt’s past and the future of civilization in a story so big it requires two films to tell, even though they dropped the “Part”s from the titles for marketing purposes. This installment is everything audiences expect from the M:I series, from fantastic stunts, the IMF team wearing masks and defusing bombs, and large chunks of exposition to explain the confusing plot.
Buy Mission:Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One Blu-rayThe Russians are testing a state-of-the-art AI program, dubbed “Entity,” on a submarine. It’s activated by a two-piece key; however, Entity’s AI is so advanced, it tricks the Russians into blowing up the sub, sinking it on the ocean floor. It then works its way into computer systems around the world, such as defense systems and financial networks. It’s a “self-aware, self-learning, truth-eating, digital parasite” able to create deep-fakes audio and video. Every government wants to control it, unaware that it can’t.
Ethan and his team get involved to get the pieces of the key, although he doesn’t know what it unlocks or where it will take him. He first heads to the Arabian desert near Yemen where Ilsa (Rebecca Ferguson) has one piece of the key, but someone has hired bounty hunters.
After hearing of an upcoming exchange of the other piece of the key, the team heads to the Abu Dhabi airport. Ethan searches for his target while being pursued by CIA agents led by (Shea Wigham) and a team of assassins working for the Entity, whose lead man, Gabriel (Esai Morales), is from Ethan’s pre-IMF past. Further complicating matters, brilliant pickpocket Grace (Haley Carter) has been hired to get the piece. The cat-and-mouse sequence has added tension of Benji (Simon Pegg) and Luther (Ving Rhames) working to defuse a nuclear bomb.
Grace escapes from Ethan but gets caught by Italian authorities in Venice. Ethan poses as her lawyer to get her out, leading to major stunt-driving sequence driving through the city streets with not only agents and assassins after them, but Italian police as well.
A party thrown by arms dealer Alanna Mitsopolis (Vanessa Shaw), previously see in Fallout, brings Grace, Ethan, and Gabriel together. She hired Grace because she has a buyer for the complete key, whom she is meeting on the Orient Express. Grace chooses to work with the IMF, and the plan is for her to pose as Alanna. Ethan has to join the train in the most Tom Cruise way he can, by way of a breathtaking motorcycle/parachute jump that has to be seen to be believed and even then, one might not believe their eyes.
Secrets are revealed aboard the train, from whom Alanna’s buyer is to what the Russian sub contains. The film’s climax features fights within and atop a runaway train and Ethan and Grace working through train cars that slowly spill into a ravine, a sequence that will have viewers on the edge of their seat.
While the Dead Reckoning story by director Christopher McQuarrie and Erik Jendresen features the usual traits of the spy genre from a conflict that has global stakes to characters switching alliances, it’s a slight disappointment that the story doesn’t end until the next film. What’s not disappointing are the thrilling action sequences executed by Second Unit Director / Stunt Coordinator Wade Eastwood and his team of stunt men and women, including Tom Cruise, that will long be remembered after the credits roll.
