Tom Cruise shines in the awe-inspiring action of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning

With mind-boggling stunts and awe-inspiring action, Leigh Paatsch looks at whether the latest installment of Mission: Impossible franchise will appease its loyal fanbase.

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (M)

Director: Christopher McQuarrie (Mission: Impossible – Fallout)

Starring: Tom Cruise, Hayley Atwell, Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, Rebecca Ferguson.

Rating: ****

Still doing the impossible after all this time

Arriving amid much hype and ballyhoo as the seventh instalment in the long-running Mission: Impossible series, Dead Reckoning Part One is also hauling along some heavy baggage for the trip.

Not only was its predecessor (2018’s Mission: Impossible – Fallout) clearly the best thing that ever happened to the franchise, it also just happened to be one of the finest action movies of the 21st century so far.

Oh, and then there is the not-inconsiderable fact that the face of all things Mission: Impossible is a bloke called Tom Cruise.

After the thermonuclear heat generated by last year’s box-office-blasting blockbuster Top Gun: Maverick, Cruise’s star credentials have never burned brighter.

And, just to top it all off, Dead Reckoning is being delivered to audiences as a two-part final assignment for both the M:I franchise and its death-defying poster boy, IMF Agent Ethan Hunt.

So is the first of Dead Reckoning’s dual goodbyes to its loyal fanbase any good? Of course it is.

While it does not quite hit the soaring heights of Fallout, the new movie flies mighty close to the same breathless, awe-inspiring altitudes. (If there is a slight dip in quality with Part One, it is only that Cruise and his filmmaking team have had to keep a few spectacular tricks up their sleeve for Part Two.)

Rebecca Ferguson, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg and Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One.

As always, consistent pacing and judicious placement of the all-important (and perpetually stakes-raising) action sequences are deployed to maximum effect here.

Plot-wise, Ethan Hunt (played by Cruise in a relatively dour mode compared his animated display in Top Gun: Maverick) faces two distinct enemies this time around.

The first is an old foe that welded-on M:I tragics will recognise from a much earlier movie in the series. The second adversary is a distinctly inhuman phenomenon that everyone will recognise from today’s headlines: artificial intelligence.

Someone, somewhere has unleashed an indestructible self-learning strip of AI code known to all as “The Entity”. Control of this shapeless, ethics-free program is something every legitimate government and illegitimate super-crook would love to get their hands on.

Ultimate ownership of The Entity will go to whoever acquires both halves of an analog key, the whereabouts of which (in true Mission: Impossible style) can jump entire cities, countries and continents at short notice.

Once its complicated premise is bedded down in compelling fashion, Dead Reckoning Part One is free to get busy with what the M:I brand truly does best: taking an audience’s breath away with intricately choreographed and insanely risky stunt sequences.

The two standout set pieces in a movie literally jam-packed with sudden bursts of killer kinetic energy are easy to nominate.

Hayley Atwell and Tom Cruise in a killer car chase around Rome in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One.

The first is electrifying extended car chase (with Cruise and new M:I co-star Hayley Atwell handcuffed to each other in a tiny yellow Fiat) that comprehensively ticks all of the big-ticket boxes expected from a production of this scale.

The second ends the movie on a thunderously audacious action crescendo: a half-hour set-piece staged inside, outside and (with Cruise already famously combining a motorbike and a parachute) high above a runaway train speeding through the Alps.

As you would expect from a series as well-established as this, Dead Reckoning’s quieter interludes are often just as entertaining as its louder outbursts, largely thanks to the proven chemistry of support-cast regulars such as Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames and Rebecca Ferguson.

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One opens in general release on Saturday, July 8

The New Boy

***

General Release

Cate Blanchett as a nun in a remote orphanage in the Australian movie The New Boy.

The first two movies from Australian director, writer and cinematographer Warwick Thornton – 2009’s Samson & Delilah, and 2017’s Sweet Country – rank among the finest made in this part of the world.

While Thornton’s long-awaited third feature does not diminish his reputation as a major filmmaking talent, it is a minor work by his own high standards.

The new movie is set at an outback orphanage in the early 1940s. A young Aboriginal child (referred to throughout as “New Boy”) found wandering about in the scrub has been brought in and placed in the care of the establishment’s habit-wearing head honcho, Sister Eileen (Cate Blanchett). Just exactly what Sister Eileen has in store for New Boy remains a mystery throughout.

Is this silent, yet irrefutably charismatic kid (superbly played with commanding presence by newcomer Aswan Reed) here to be tamed, or educated, or converted, or just as possibly, none of the above?

The enigmatic nature of New Boy’s assimilation into the orphanage’s rigid system does keep a viewer’s curiosity intensely piqued across the entirety of the movie.

However, what Thornton is trying to say with this material – particularly when it comes to the problematic role that religion has played in the histories of our Indigenous peoples – remains strangely garbled and inconclusive.

Originally published as Tom Cruise shines in the awe-inspiring action of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning