Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (Tom Cruise Running for Three Hours)

A fun action movie, that falls short of previous ‘missions.’

The experience of watching the 7th entry in the Mission: Impossible franchise is akin to spending a day to see the ocean, yet when you get there, it’s storming and might rain. Yes, the elements of a fun water day are present, but man, do you wish you’d checked the weather. Dead Reckoning Part One is not terrible by any means. Compared to the other options to come out of the Hollywood machine in 2023, It’s not the worst option on the table.  

Each of the past entries in this franchise have seen to have gotten bigger, and better. A seemingly impossible feat, yet the eventuality of the train running out of steam has caught up to the nearly 30-year series. Even Tom Cruise can’t run that fast. Again, this is by no means a bad movie, it’s just very sloppy. There’s nothing wrong with replacing big stunts with a tighter and more focused story, but that’s not what Dead Reckoning’s script does. 

It’s ironic the film centers around Ethan Hunt, and his team, stopping an artificial intelligence gone rogue, as unfortunately, aside from one or two moments the story beats are very predictable. Rarely do you feel caught off guard by new revelations, or taken aback by a shocking answer, if at all. Instead, the film re-explains the plot over and over and over again, and right when you begin to understand important details, it ends.

It suffers from the biggest problem the new “part one-part two,” epidemic in modern films such as Spiderman: Across the Spider-Verse, or Fast X, all face, it spends too much setting up for the sequel, that it forgets to tell its own story. It takes until around the hour mark to really feel like the story is going. I’ll note here, that the movie is almost three hours long, and about an hour of that runtime was unneeded.

The story that is found here, is pretty okay. It introduces us to a great villain Gabriel, who shares a past with Ethan, as well as wonderfully balancing out new characters with familiar favorites. Haley Atwell as thief Grace was awesome, she is a great addition to the cast, without overshadowing Ethan as the protagonist. 

The action definitely stands out, yet falls short of the last films. It’s more along the lines of Ghost Protocol than the last two movies, which is fine. A lot of the action is Tom Cruise running, more than ever before. A car chase in Rome is fun and seeing a Fiat drive all through the streets and stairs was a treat.

The stand-out moment comes at the end in which Tom Cruise drives off a mountain on a motorcycle and flies onto a train. The last 40 minutes take place on said train and are fun. It’s just too bad the heights of Rouge Nation, and Fallout aren’t quite met.

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One has a story as confusing as its name, but it is still a solid action adventure. Subduing expectations beforehand definitely makes this a better watch, it’s more classic Mission Impossible action, than the intriguing story-driven plots the series has become. It’s a good watch and definitely makes you want to see part two, but it’s not something you need to watch right away.