Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part One

➤ Rated PG-13
➤ Theaters

Who would choose to accept the impossible mission of saving America’s flagging box office? Tom Cruise, of course, whose Top Gun: Maverick became a global phenomenon last summer. He’s been one of Hollywood’s most vocal proponents of seeing films in theaters, and with his ambitious film Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part One, he provides over-the-top spectacle that helps make his case.

Cruise returns as super spy Ethan Hunt of the IMF, America’s covert operatives of last resort. Ethan’s latest impossible mission involves tracking down a key that every government on the planet is trying to get. Whoever holds this key can control a rogue artificial intelligence that’s manipulating the world’s information systems.

Ethan and his long-term teammates Benji (Simon Pegg) and Luther (Ving Rhames) are once again helped by his sort-of girlfriend and former MI6 operative Ilsa (Rebecca Ferguson). Gabriel (Esai Morales), a shadowy villain from Ethan’s past who somehow never leaves a trace, also hopes to secure the key, as does Grace (Hayley Atwell), a talented thief who wants to sell it to the highest bidder.

Dead Reckoning started filming more than two years before ChatGPT accelerated the debate over the ethics of AI, but the movie mirrors current fears about our changing relationship with technology. The film asks whether we can trust information when algorithms easily manipulate the ones and zeros. In one scene, hundreds of intelligence agents furiously type on manual typewriters, trying to preserve digital records before the rogue AI rewrites the past.

Everyone wants to control the powerful AI, but the AI doesn’t want to be controlled. It actually demonstrates how easily it can control humans. The algorithm deftly bends the will of human beings, usually without their realizing, while some people devote themselves to the system with a cult-like fervor. Mission: Impossible warns us that technology is a false god.

While the film contains its social critique, it also acts as a meta commentary on Hollywood’s addiction to computer-generated imagery. Like Cruise’s other movies, Dead Reckoning relies primarily on practical effects, with Cruise and the other actors performing their own stunts. Dead Reckoning offers bigger and better spectacle than most recent superhero films, with top-notch fights, chases, and daredevilry.

Cruise says avoiding CGI allows his films to tell better stories because the actors exercise their craft within physical space rather than in front of a green screen. Mission: Impossible action sequences possess a visceral quality that’s often reflected in Cruise’s face. Speaking of Cruise’s face, he’s looking impossibly young. It’s pretty clear his scruples don’t extend to eschewing the AI-assisted CGI that helps smooth his crow’s feet.

Along with the spectacle and some thought-provoking questions about our reliance on technology, this movie also expands the lore of Ethan Hunt and his Impossible Mission Force, but its improbable premise—needing a physical key to control a worldwide rogue AI—keeps it from being as good as the fourth, fifth, and sixth installments. The heist element that’s usually so prominent is also a little lacking.

This movie is so ambitious that it feels a little bloated. The cast includes more than a dozen characters, including Cary Elwes as a U.S. official, Pom Klementieff as a crazed assassin, and Henry Czerny returning as Eugene Kittridge from the first film. Despite the film’s hefty 2-hour-and-43-minute runtime, many characters get short shrift, disappearing to make room for others.

Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part One is such a big movie that, as the name implies, the story is split into two halves, with Part Two due in 2024. Part One ends with some resolution while setting up the next installment. For fans of old-school action movies and practical effects, Mission: Impossible 7 is definitely worth seeing, and worth seeing on a big screen.