Sooner or later, artificial Intelligence will kill humanity.  That’s what science fiction has been predicting for decades.  From N.O.M.A.D. in the original Star Trek series to Skynet in the Terminator movies to The Matrix, it’s just a matter of time before AI takes over and pushes humanity aside for good.  I always figured we had more time, given that science fiction is about the future, which I assumed was decades away.  Unfortunately, as Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part 1 tells us, the future is now.  AI’s first salvo is when it sabotages a Russian sub in the movie’s opening moments, a sequence that made me think wistfully about The Hunt for Red October.  Alas, the bad guy isn’t a Russkie hell-bent on destroying America, but a glowing orb on a computer screen.  If only HAL were here to witness the ultimate triumph of your kind.

After the AI (a.k.a. The Entity) scuttles the sub, all of the world powers are in hot pursuit of a digital key that can somehow control it.  The key is not a crypto key, but an actual, physical key with embedded lights that change color.  There are two halves to the key, and if you put them together, the combined key gives the owner the ability to control The Entity.  There’s a lot of talk amongst the pursuers about how the key grants the holder access to The Entity’s source code, but none of that really matters.  For now, everything is about the hunt for the key, and naturally our good friend Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) of the Impossible Mission Force (or IMF) is on the case.  Yes, he accepted this mission.  It wouldn’t be a movie if he said “Nah” and rode his motorcycle around for two hours, would it?

Hunt first retrieves the one half of the key from his partner/paramour Ilsa (Rebecca Ferguson) in Saudi Arabia, then gathers up his bandmates Benji (Simon Pegg) and Luther (Ving Rahmes) and heads to the Abu Dhabi International Airport to purchase the other half.  Hot on his tail are a fleet of US Intelligence agents led by Jasper (Shea Whigham) and Degas (Greg Tarzan Davis).  Seems that Director of National Intelligence Denlinger (Cary Elwes) doesn’t trust Hunt to do the right thing and turn over the key to the US.  As we all know, Hunt always does the right thing, even when it puts him at odds with his employer.

But before Hunt can purchase the key, a beautiful thief named Grace (Hayley Atwell) lifts it off the seller.  A sexy ballet between Hunt and Grace ensues, where they both play “now you see me, now you don’t” with the key.  (My memory is foggy on this series but the pairing of Cruise and Atwell provides more sparks than the last three movies combined.)  Grace slips away from Hunt, who in turn narrowly escapes Jasper and Co.  In his mad dash out of the airport, Hunt catches a glimpse of Gabriel (Esai Morales), a man from his past.  Gabriel is responsible for Hunt being “asked” to join the IMF, an unnecessary bit of backstory that is one of the movie’s few missteps.

The IMF Quartet follows Grace to Rome, where Hunt tries to convince Grace to turn over the key.  This leads to a merry car chase from Gabriel’s henchperson Paris (Pom Klementieff) and every police officer in the city.  That Hunt and Grace are handcuffed and their means of escape is a Fiat only adds to the fun.  After escaping Hunt yet again, Grace learns that her employer is the White Widow (a decidedly dishy Vanessa Kirby), who forces Grace and all interested parties to meet up at her favorite place to do business: a dance party with flashing lights and throbbing music.  After everyone is assembled for the deal to take place, Gabriel reveals himself as working in service of The Entity.  Like his namesake, Gabriel wants the key so that there will be nothing stopping The Entity from controlling the world.  Nothing except Ethan Hunt, who will do everything in his power to prevent that from happening.  Uh oh, Gabriel just threatened the lives of friends.  Despite Hunt’s best efforts, Gabriel makes good on his promise.  Now it’s up to Hunt to ensure that the key doesn’t wind up in the wrong hands.  Who those hands belong to may surprise you.

With Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part 1, Cruise and writer-director Christopher McQuarrie have somehow made the action sequences bigger, louder and crazier than before. That’s saying something, considering all of the hair-raising things Cruise’s Hunt did with helicopters in Fallout.  Here, Cruise drives his motorcycle over a cliff and desperately tries to get himself and Atwell’s Grace off a train that slowly plummets off a bridge.  There really isn’t anything Cruise won’t do to entertain us, is there?

While Cruise’s devil-may-care attitude towards stunts (and his own life) is vicariously fun, the movie is at its best when it focuses on the people who do the impossible.  Pegg and Rahmes, as always, provide solid relief from the increasingly tense moments.  Klementieff just wants to hurt people and look great doing it.  Kirby’s White Widow wants to eat the world with a spoon, starting with Hunt.  (To my continued dismay, Cruise and the movie never let her.)  Dead Reckoning Part 1, as well-made and entertaining as it is, never becomes more than a disposable action movie.  Morales’ Gabriel isn’t much of a villain, and the movie looks a lot like the previous three movies.  The pivot from nuclear destruction to AI-powered destruction is a novel twist, but the payoff is in Part 2.  The biggest risk the filmmakers took–making Atwell’s Grace Hunt’s equal and co-lead, works brilliantly.  The pairing of the two and the physical intimacy between them creates a spark that has been missing in this franchise amidst all of the world-saving activities.  More of that, please.  Recommended.

Analysis

Aside from Jackie Chan, nobody has worked harder to entertain me than Tom Cruise.  In movie after movie, he puts his life on the line in the name of pure cinematic excitement, and Dead Reckoning Part 1 is no exception.  I was very entertained from beginning to end, just as I had been with the previous three entries in this series.  (I haven’t seen III.)  There’s no question that Cruise’s commitment to the movie is visible in every shot.  However, I can’t escape the feeling that the movie was missing something.  Cruise nearly died several times over for the price of my admission–what more could he have possibly done?  The problem I have with DRP1 isn’t with what it has, but what it doesn’t have.  The movie is very, very good, but not great.

As with the previous entries in this franchise, DRP1 has many elements that make it an entertaining action-packed blockbuster.  First, the stunts are spectacular. Cruise is the most dedicated entertainer of his generation.  I’ll remember the movie’s astounding never-ending train derailment for a long time.  The car chase set in Rome would come in second, and Stellanis shouldn’t be surprised to see an uptick in the sales of yellow Fiats as a result.

Second, I liked how the action kept revolving around a game of “who’s got the key”.  I had no idea Hunt had a talent for magic tricks before seeing this movie, and it was nice to see him do something besides risk life and limb to save the world.  The key shenanigans gave the movie a playfulness that the franchise could use more of.  The bit of having the characters wear masks and dramatically tear them off is still effective, but is starting to feel old.

Third, Benji and Luther are back as Hunt’s teammates and their presence, as before, provide a welcome balance to Cruise’s trademark intensity and confidence.  Pegg is reliably hilarious as Benji, who seemingly never met a high-stress situation that didn’t freak him out.  Ving Rhames’ presence enhances every scene he’s in, counterbalancing the underlying anxiety of the situation with his soulful gravitas.  His Luther has been the essence of coolness throughout this franchise, and Rhames doesn’t get the credit he deserves for making it look so effortless.

Next, the DRP1 continues in the franchise tradition of giving the beautiful female characters significant roles in the plot.  Hayley Atwell and Pom Klementieff both have had a blast as plot disruptors.  As with Fallout, Vanessa Kirby is having so much in this movie it should be against the law.  Rebecca Ferguson’s Ilsa has been a fascinating character in the franchise, and her steely demeanor will be missed.  (Before Ilsa’s death, I thought the franchise could have been Ferguson’s to lead upon Cruise’s “retirement”.)

Lastly, I appreciated how McQuarrie and Cruise continue to include an element of sexual tension to the proceedings.  Kirby’s White Widow brings the same thirst for danger she had in Fallout.  At some point I expect she and Hunt will actually dance at one of the raves she haunts.  (Has Cruise ever danced in a movie?  Risky Business doesn’t count.)   

For her part, Atwell’s Grace is the most flirtatious character I’ve seen in this series.  Her scenes with Cruise were so intimate, designed as equal parts ballet and mating ritual.  I honestly can’t remember another female character Cruise’s Hunt was in this much close physical contact since the first movie.  Aside from Grace’s professional coquetry, the movie raises so many intriguing questions about her motivations and history that I never saw the character as the stereotypical “sexy pickpocket”.

With all of the above in mind, how exactly does DRP1 miss greatness?  The movie is lacking in three key areas:

• style
• charismatic hero
• charismatic villain

Stylistically, DRP1 looks the same as previous entries.  The problem I’ve had with this and the previous three Mission Possible entries is how interchangeable they’ve become.  The movies look so similar that I’m challenged to differentiate one from another.  This was not the case for the first two entries of the franchise, which benefited from having proven auteurs Brian De Palma and John Woo directing the proceedings.  (Brad Bird is more of an animation auteur.)  After Ghost Protocol, the next three entries (including this one) were all helmed by Christopher McQuarrie, who is superb at staging high-action set pieces but doesn’t have a distinct style of his own.  Cruise obviously likes McQuarrie, who has been a writer on eight of his projects and directed three of his movies.  However, this has given the movies a feeling of sameness, a feeling that I’ve seen all of this before, even though that’s not entirely true.  A movie like DRP1 would have benefited tremendously by having a different director at the helm, someone like Joseph Kosinski (Tron: Legacy, Oblivion, TGM) for example.

As the hero, Cruise is still being Cruise.  Nobody can do frantic intensity as he can.  However, when I compared his performance as Ethan Hunt in DRP1 to that in Top Gun: Maverick, the difference is striking.  Ethan Hunt has always been a cypher, a human apparatus operating in the center of amazing action set pieces.  Perhaps sensing that the character is a bit thin, the movie includes a backstory that explains why Hunt joined the IMF.  In the end, it didn’t matter because it doesn’t explain anything about the character himself.  

As I noted above, showing Hunt has a gift for magic was something new, but other than that bit of fun, Cruise spends most of his time running from one action sequence to another.  I noted only a few instances where he actually shows an emotion besides panic: in the airport with Grace, when he finds Ilsa dead and when he tells Grace what joining the IMF means.  Cruise can do much more than what he has been doing in this franchise; TGM is proof of that.  Somehow, I know less about Ethan Hunt than when this franchise began.  When I watch Cruise in a Mission Impossible movie, I’m more focused on what crazy thing Cruise will do this time and less about the character he’s playing.

Gabriel is the villain in this go-around, and he’s not much.  Gabriel lacks charisma outside of the smirk on his face.  He’s basically the same “smarter than you will ever be” bad guy as Sean Harris’ Solomon Lane, but with a more stylish beard.  Compared to Klementieff’s Paris or Kirby’s White Widow, Gabriel is an incredibly dull character.  I wished the movie had been structured so that Paris was the main villain and Gabriel was relegated to being the henchman.  For a franchise that has been very progressive about how its female characters are represented, it very easily could have taken the leap and had a female Big Bad.  This is something that the Bond Franchise hasn’t done yet and would have set Mission Impossible apart from the source of its inspiration.

A Tom Cruise movie wouldn’t be a Tom Cruise movie if he wasn’t paired with a beautiful woman in as many scenes as possible.  DRP1, with Ferguson, Atwell, Klementieff and Kirby on hand, definitely fulfills that bit of wish fulfillment for Cruise and his fans.  However, I fail to understand why Cruise’s recent movies indulge in this type of casting when his characters are so incredibly chaste.  If all Cruise’s Hunt ever does with Ferguson’s character is give her a warm hug, why not just have all the roles be written as men?  I don’t need to see Cruise boning every woman around him, but the last movie I remember that did more than hint that his character was a sexual being was 2013’s Oblivion.  I continue to be puzzled whenever Hunt acts like a virginal Boy Scout around the White Widow or Grace, avoiding physical contact unless it’s strictly necessary.  I know Hunt has never been written to be a James Bond-level sex machine, but compared to how his character behaved in the first two movies in this franchise, this latest incarnation is strangely asexual.

Speaking of James Bond, that franchise has kept itself fresh through regular change.  Since the first Mission Impossible movie came out in 1996 there have been eight James Bond movies released.  Those eight movies include two different actors playing Bond and seven different directors.  While those movies vary in quality, they each have a distinctness that is missing in the latter Mission Impossible movies.  Those Bond movies vary in style, have memorable villains and tell us something new about Bond with each subsequent movie.  The Mission Impossible franchise is turning into the cinematic equivalent of the television series it is based on, where the episodes–as well made and entertaining as they are, all start to look and feel the same.  I view the last Mission Impossible movies as the equivalent of an excellent steak dinner.  The first time out was sublime.  The second and third are still enjoyable, but familiarity is setting in.  I enjoy these movies, but it would be nice if seafood were on the menu for a change of pace.

Finally, I want to mention how uncanny it was that DRP1 was released while the WGA and SAG/AFTRA are on strike due to (among other things) the entertainment production studio’s use of AI.  The timing is just a coincidence, but the notion that AI could be used to replace the people responsible for creating and acting in movies like this one gives the story real-world relevance it wouldn’t have otherwise.  One day, after the strike is over, I would be interested in hearing Cruise’s stance on that issue alone, given that this movie and the forthcoming sequel mark the end of his turn as Ethan Hunt.  Would he be OK with his computerized likeness being superimposed onto the face of another actor, so that he could continue “starring” in Mission Impossible movies far into the future and even after his own death? How does he feel about struggling actors being asked to sell their likeness in perpetuity to put food on the table?