Obsession with the past has been the major feature of big-budget Hollywood filmmaking for years now. It’s hard to go to the theaters and not see most screens taken over by some form of IP. Many of the more artistically successful blockbusters of the past decade — like “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” — have been about using the past to move on and create something new. In “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One,” Tom Cruise and company have taken a different approach, using traditional, practical filmmaking to create something that still feels as new and thrilling as ever.
At a point in the medium’s history where AI and other digital technologies threaten to take jobs away from artists and craftspeople, claiming they can do just as emotionally satisfying a job but really acting as means of cutting costs, it would make sense that the scariest villain Cruise and writer-director Christopher McQuarrie can come up with isn’t any human or country, but a godless, stateless digital system. The portrayal of the AI MacGuffin/antagonist isn’t handled with enough depth or knowledge to make a scathing, nuanced commentary on the threat of this new technology. However, it is vague enough to make for a threatening, anxiety-inducing challenge. It takes a film that would otherwise feel like empty spectacle and makes it more thematically resonant as you can feel both Cruise and the character of Ethan Hunt fighting against a future that doesn’t see their value.
For the most part, however, the film isn’t particularly narratively satisfying. Not that plot or character has ever mattered much in this franchise, but the formula is starting to wear more than it ever has. Not only does everything feel drawn out past its breaking point, from long-winded exposition scenes to overbearing action set pieces, but the film is needlessly unresolved by the end. Though always engaging and full of energy, the scope of this story doesn’t warrant its epic, five-hour, two-part runtime — although maybe by the end of the next film, it will have earned it.
But, again, the “Mission: Impossible” series has never reached incredible heights through its narrative construction. The set pieces are what matters most here. While none in “Dead Reckoning - Part One” can rival some of the series’ best, each action sequence reaches consistently high levels of awe-inspiring craft with varied levels of scale and intensity. Seeing Ethan both following a target and being followed himself throughout the airport in Abu Dhabi while Benji (Simon Pegg) and Luther (Ving Rhames) try to dismantle a nuclear bomb is just as nerve-wracking as seeing him ride a motorcycle off the side of a cliff. That lack of dropoff keeps the film from dragging even when the script bogs it down in overcomplicated, nonsensical storytelling.
“Dead Reckoning Part One” is, if nothing else, a technical achievement on par with almost anything Hollywood has put out post-COVID, and that’s due, in large part, to its more traditional, human style of filmmaking. Sure, there is plenty of digital technology used to cover up seams, but for the most part, you are seeing the vision of McQuarrie and Cruise and not something a studio changed several times over in post because research, focus groups, or AI told them what audiences would most likely want to see. It may be the seventh film in a series, and it may not go to places this series hasn’t before, but the film manages to feel fresh because nobody makes big-budget spectacle like this anymore.
