Kevin C. Wong

Movie - Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning p1 (2023) [/]

Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning p1 is a 2-1/2 hour action movie that tells half of an epic story. Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is brought back from semi-retirement to retrieve a key for stolen by colleague Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) of MI6.

That intro mission leads and further investigation leads him to the big plot: a rogue and independent AI, the Entity, that has infiltrated all governments and private sectors. A two-part key will unlock something that can be used to control it and every government in the world will eventually go after it (though that doesn't happen in part 1).

With such awesome destructive power in the wild Ethan takes it upon himself to find the key and use it to destroy the Entity. To do that he is joined by his long-time IMF support team of Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames) and Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg). (As a side note those two characters way overlap in specialties leaving Ethan and guest star to do the actioning.) They are later joined by Faust and eventually recruit international thief Grace (Hayley Atwell) who becomes mixed up in this.

Opposing Ethan and team is the Entity, who wants the key that can destroy it. The Entity uses Gabriel (Esai Morales) as his agent though Gabriel is more of a sinister mastermind type and has assassin Paris (Pom Klementieff) to lead his mercenaries. In a flashback we see that Gabriel murdered one of Ethan's (team mates? loves? protection targets? I'm not sure) so he is an old enemy that was presumed dead long ago.

Lots of set pieces, traveling around the globe, interesting action locales. The McGuffin is very McGuffin-y and the Entity is rather over-the-top as a villain. It's a nice summer blockbuster type movie but, like Fast and the Furious, it's a series that's gone way too long with the same main characters. The heists and cons seem more spectacle and less clever. I did enjoy the film but in spite of Tom Cruise and company as it's the guest stars (Atwell, Morales and Klementieff) that kind of steal the show.