Mission Impossible – Dead Reckoning – Part One

Length: 02h 23 min
Genre: Action: Thriller
Appropriate Audience: Young Audiences
Ratings by: decine21 (7) users (7.4)

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Ethan Hunt and his IMF team embark on their most dangerous mission to date: to locate, before it falls into the wrong hands, a terrifying new weapon that threatens all of humanity. Against this backdrop, and with dark forces from Ethan’s past lurking, a deadly race around the world begins in which the control of the future and the fate of the planet is at stake.

This is the excellent first part of the culmination of the espionage saga that began in 1996 with Mission Impossible (the original television programme dates from the 1960s) and has had a total of seven instalments or missions, the last of which has been divided into two parts. All of them have starred Tom Cruise, who therefore says goodbye to one of the most successful franchises in the history of cinema. Who knows if someone will have the courage to replace him?Behind the cameras we have again Christopher McQuarrie, who took controls in the fifth instalment and since then has been fully involved in the series with great results, so that he has also ended up serving as producer in the company of Cruise himself.

In Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One, a sophisticated Artificial Intelligence – known by the enigmatic name of ‘The Entity’ – has become self-aware and is poised to take control of the new world order. It seems that the only way to prevent this is to use a key made up of two complementary halves that, together, can deactivate this dangerous digital thinking being. Ethan Hunt’s mission is – if he wants to accept it – to find the two parts of the key and find out where the core of the AI is located in order to deactivate it. It goes without saying that ‘The Entity’ is capable of foreseeing every move and that there are also many people and governments who want to get their hands on the key, either to sell it to the highest bidder or to become masters of the planet’s destiny.

The screenplay by Christopher McQuarrie and Erik Jendresen is, it must be said, a mere vehicle to offer overwhelming action sequences in different world scenarios: Abu Dhabi, Rome, Venice, the Austrian Alps… The whole story is a competition to see who gets the prize, in this case, the double key, a textbook macguffin, a mere excuse to show the various skills of the contenders in the art of deception, manipulation, intelligence, hand-to-hand combat, etc. The script also has the virtue of introducing a slight but powerful cross-cutting plot that touches the protagonist seriously in his own person, so that it gives rise to highly dramatic scenes.

Of course, the action sequences in Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One are among the best in the saga and also among the best ever made to date, especially those that take place in the streets of Rome, with a car chase of the highest voltage or, perhaps, the most shocking of all, the one that has to do with the long passage of the Orient Express, the famous train that connects Paris and Istanbul. Tom Cruise once again proves that at over sixty years of age he is still in amazing shape.

For the rest, the film does not fail to establish one constant factor that has become more intense as we progressed through the instalments. We refer to the friendship and complicity that surrounds all the members of Hunt’s team, where each one is willing to offer his own life for the others and also to help to redirect possible deviations of others when it comes to doing the right thing. This is of course compatible with the touches of humour that, although few, are always very effective, with a nice wink towards fans of the saga.

Among the cast, the highlight is the appearance of Hayley Atwell as Grace, a skilled thief who ends up winning over the audience and becomes a great partner in crime for Tom Cruise himself. Also strong is Esai Morales, who recovers the twisted Gabriel, a mysterious character from Ethan Hunt’s past. Among the females, Rebecca Ferguson and Vanessa Kirby shine again, the latter in a formidable double role. And they are superbly accompanied by crew members Simon Pegg and Ving Rhames, the latter being the only actor, along with Cruise, who has been present in all the films.