Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1 Review: An Underwhelming Start For Tom Cruise's Two-Part Blockbuster Event

In the post-trilogy era of the Mission: Impossible franchise, the films have found tremendous success by simply doing specific special things with skill and flair. The plots are straightforward and mostly forgettable, and the characters and dramatic performances aren’t made to be particularly complex, but the blockbusters blow minds with astonishing set pieces, well-established stakes, charismatic stars, and spectacular cinematography. In reflection, elements from the movies feel interchangeable between them, but they each have had an awesome, captivating power on the big screen.

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1, however, is the first installment in the series where the adventure has felt monotonous. Presented with no reason to alter course, director Christopher McQuarrie and star Tom Cruise stick to the formula and provide extended periods of thrills and spectacle, but not since Mission: Impossible II has a Mission: Impossible movie felt so hollow and bereft of foundation. There are interesting elements of story sprinkled in, such as showcasing the path one takes to become a Impossible Mission Force agent, but it’s a near-three hour blockbuster that is overlong despite it never dragging or feeling exhausting. At its best, it keeps you on the edge of your seat, but in between, it’s hard not to notice that characters have the exact same conversation over and over again.

This time around, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his cadre of close colleagues find themselves pitted against not a sinister international agency or treacherous moles in the IMF, but instead what is called The Entity: an artificial intelligence that has the capacity to seize and manipulate the entire world’s financial institutions and military capabilities. It’s understood that to harness The Entity would allow for global domination, but this can only be accomplished if two halves of a special key can be found and properly utilized.

Believing that nobody should possess the power of The Entity and aiming to destroy it, Ethan reteams with colleagues Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg) and Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames) for a globetrotting adventure to track down and assemble the key. One half is fortunately with an ally – namely Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson), who has gone on the run after being disavowed by MI6 – but the other proves to be more difficult to hold on to. This is specifically because of the intervention of Grace (Hayley Atwell), a gifted thief and con artist who is also after the powerful MacGuffin, and Gabriel (Esai Morales), a deadly individual operating on behalf of The Entity with antagonistic ties to Ethan’s past.

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1 is surprisingly generic and repetitive. 

Because of his connection to The Entity, Gabriel is the only person on Earth who actually knows how the assembled key can be utilized to control the artificial intelligence… and if this is a detail that you miss the first time it’s mentioned, the good news is that you’ll get plenty more opportunities to grasp the idea as it’s constantly repeated. The same goes for discussions of the danger that the artificial intelligence represents, that you can only tell if one half of the key is fake by having both halves, and that Gabriel once killed someone that Ethan cared about (which is paired with flashback footage that is shown multiple times). With the story as thin as it is, stakes are turned into padding for the film’s quieter scenes – packaged along with the information about the next far-flung destination to which the protagonists will fly for the next big chase and/or battle.

As noted earlier, none of the Mission: Impossible movies since Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol have featured cerebral and complicated plots to complement the death-defying stunts orchestrated by Tom Cruise, but the narrative lacking is more prominent here, and one can’t help but wonder if it’s in part because what would normally be enough story for one Dead Reckoning film is being stretched into two.

Hayley Atwell's Grace is an exciting newcomer in the Mission: Impossible franchise.

Paired with the generic artificial intelligence plotting is the introduction of two generic two prominent characters in Grace and Gabriel – and though wanting for depth, they do add energy to the film thanks to the skills of the performers. Hayley Atwell plays the former with an impressive mix of rogue’s confidence and fear that comes from being out of her depth in the world of tradecraft, but also (most importantly) she has a sharp on-screen rapport opposite Tom Cruise. Esai Morales has the harder job, if not especially because of the rough retcon job the film does trying to establish Gabriel as Ethan Hunt’s old archnemesis, but the turn has all the sinister and suave energy required for the part.

Unfortunately, there are franchise newcomers who end up being far more let down by the shallowest aspects of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1’s script. Shea Whigham and Greg Tarzan Davis, as two vague law enforcement officials on Ethan Hunt’s tail, ultimately add little more to the film than being tagalong pursuers in chase sequences and waving guns in the air. Pom Klementieff, meanwhile, gets to exhibit a lot of ferocity as Gabriel’s number one soldier, but the character lacks any kind of special signature to help her stand out.

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1 is an excellent spectacle, but it doesn't raise the bar for the franchise.

As for the special signature of the general Mission: Impossible franchise, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1 delivers on its biggest promise (a lot of Tom Cruise running and personally performing jaw-dropping stunts), though fans should tamper expectations a smidge – particularly those who have learned all about the sequence where Ethan Hunt rides a motorcycle off of a cliff. Christopher McQuarrie orchestrates a number of bombastic, cheer-worthy set pieces in the blockbuster, including a tremendous romp through Rome and an intense third act fight set on top of an out-of-control train, but it also can’t be said that the movie ups the game for the franchise, which is something that was expertly done by the previous three sequels in the long-running series.

Following on the heels of the cinematic triumphs that are Ghost Protocol, Rogue Nation and Fallout, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1 is a poorly timed disappointment in that it doesn’t inspire overwhelming excitement for the story’s conclusion (scheduled for theatrical release next summer), though it’s also far from a disaster in that one still can’t help but be wowed by the spectacle that is on display. The blockbuster’s biggest problem is that it shines a spotlight on the franchise’s greatest weaknesses, but we can hold out hope that Part 2 will deliver where its predecessor underwhelms.