If you asked most people in the United States who they thought was the most famous actor in Hollywood, consensus would likely be Tom Cruise. If you don’t believe me or just disagree, ask one of the greatest filmmakers our nation has ever produced. According to Steven Spielberg, Cruise single handedly saved “Hollywood’s ass and…theatrical distribution” and “the entire theatrical industry” last year. With the current state of the streaming wars and the ever-diminishing number of days movies spend in theaters before hitting video on-demand, Spielberg’s proclamation may prove to be premature—but it was high praise nevertheless.
Cruise struck box office gold last summer with Top Gun: Maverick, making Paramount Pictures more than $1.4 billion at the global box office and $692 million domestically after 14 weeks in theaters. The success of the 1986 hit’s long-awaited sequel resulted in the sixth highest-grossing film in box office history and landed the movie in conversations for the 2022 Academy Award for Best Picture. It makes sense why Paramount Pictures would follow that up with another beloved franchise starring their cash cow.
Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One is the seventh movie in the series that began as a television show in 1966 and revamped for the big screen by Brian DePalma (Scarface) 30 years later. We find Cruise reprising his role as Ethan Hunt alongside Ving Rhames (Pulp Fiction) playing Luther Sickell, who can lay as much claim as Cruise to ownership of the M:I franchise being the only actor who has starred in all of them. Hunt and Sickell are joined by Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg, Hot Fuzz) and Isla Faust (Rebecca Ferguson, Dune), two agents who in past movies have been initiated into the IMF, or the Impossible Missions Force.
In this iteration, Hunt has been roped in by the higher ups in the U.S. government to retrieve the second half of a key controlling a rogue algorithm capable of leading the world to a third World War, or worst, the sixth extinction. Hunt acquired the first half from Faust, who was hiding out from bounty hunters in the Middle East. Every nation, including the United States, wants to control the intellectual computer system for their own benefit; Hunt and the IMF, on the other hand, know the fate of humanity rests on their ability to destroy it.
This movie comes at the perfect time for Cruise—he’s waging a “war” against faceless algorithms in real life too. But just like real life, it may be too late. The success of tentpole franchises he’s led throughout his career ushered in the soulless era of movies we’re living through today. He’s no more to blame than anyone else in that regard. But what he misses here and in his personal life (*cough* the Church of Scientology *cough*) is that our capitalistic society has brought us to this inevitable end; the system has gone completely rouge. The movie’s subtle analogy would work a lot better for me if he and the people around him were more aware of it.
Despite this, Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One is enough of an entertainer to make up for its flaws. Much like other comparable action films in the modern age, it requires the audience to completely suspend their belief. There’s virtually no situation too complex or law of physics too improbable for the film’s protagonists to overcome. But what separates this movie is the sheer unpredictability of the plot. At times throughout the film, I literally sat at the edge of my seat wondering what could possibly come next. “How can Hunt and his team get out THIS situation?” The film’s director Christopher McQuarrie, a frequent collaborator of Cruise, won the Best Original Screenplay Oscar for The Usual Suspects in 1995 and also wrote the criminally underrated Edge of Tomorrow. It’s no wonder he knows how to create suspense.
Cruise is also an undeniably gifted actor. His humor, charm, and willingness to do his own stunts at times places him above most of his counterparts. And hames, Pegg, Ferguson, and the slew of other supporting actors further add to the texture to the film.
Are you excited to see the latest Mission: Impossible next week?