Peter Howell: Tom Cruise achieves the near sublime in “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One”: Review

Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One

Starring Tom Cruise, Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Vanessa Kirby, Esai Morales, Pom Klementieff, Mariela Garriga, Henry Czerny, Shea Whigham, Greg Tarzan Davis, Charles Parnell, Frederick Schmidt, Cary Elwes, Mark Gatiss, Indira Varma and Rob Delaney. Written by Christopher McQuarrie and Erik Jendresen. Directed by Christopher McQuarrie. Opens Wednesday in theatres everywhere. 163 minutes. PG

Back in the late 1990s, when “Mission: Impossible” movies were fresh, and viewers of the original 1960s TV series still considered themselves young, Billy Crystal lampooned the insane complexity of the storytelling.

“I want you to explain to me the plot of ‘Mission: Impossible’!” he demanded of star Tom Cruise, in one of Crystal’s movie spoofs at the Academy Awards.

Now it’s 2023 and the Impossible Missions Force is back for its seventh big-screen outing, “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One,” with Tom Cruise returning as daredevil spy Ethan Hunt. The story is ever more convoluted, to the point where only half of it can be told this summer (Part Two arrives in 2024).

The age-flouting Cruise, 61, still does his own outrageous stunts: leaping off a cliff, hanging from a train and showing Roman drivers clever ways to skirt road rules. It’s the reason why we still go to his movies, which include last year’s “Top Gun: Maverick,” which grossed nearly $1.5 billion — although franchise newbie Hayley Atwell, playing a slippery pickpocket, gives Cruise a run for his money in “Dead Reckoning.”

The plot ’splaining is still deemed quaintly necessary, just like the taped mission directives, just-roll-with-it latex face covers and classic bump-bump-ba-da-bump-bump score based on Lalo Schifrin’s original 1960s composition.

Returning director/co-writer Christopher McQuarrie delivers the espionage yadda-yadda early in the film, as new CIA boss Eugene Kittridge, played by Henry Czerny (last seen in the first “M:I” film in 1996), informs U.S. government officials about spy stuff they’re supposed to already know.

Kittridge amusingly lays out the raison d’être of the Impossible Missions Force to the annoyed new director of National Intelligence, played by Cary Elwes, who seems to have been residing under a boulder.

The IMF, Kittridge calmly avers, tends to operate outside of standard federal rules and oversight, saving the planet in its own unique way.

Well, duh. This won’t be news to faithful viewers of the action franchise, despite the five long years and one global pandemic since the previous IMF clambake, “Mission: Impossible — Fallout.”

The simple truth of it is, now more than ever, the mayhem is the message.

“Dead Reckoning,” my new “M:I” favourite and the summer’s biggest blockbuster — it’s Cruising to a $250-million global opener this week — gives us more action and more reason to stop caring about the who, what, where and why of it all.

Just try to relax and enjoy the absurd real-life stunts of Cruise/Hunt and his fellow lunatics as they defy physics, gravity and logic with increasingly dangerous action set pieces, including the mother of all motorcycle leaps.

True to our current AI anxieties, the main villain this time isn’t even human. It’s a sentient algorithm called “The Entity,” which looks like a child’s star painting but which grinds away at plans to take over the world’s computers (and defence systems).

The Entity is aided by a smirking mortal sidekick named Gabriel (Esai Morales), who’s more of a malevolent machine than his master and who has sinister ties to Hunt’s troubled past. Gabriel embodies what Michael Caine famously said of the Joker in “The Dark Knight”: “Some men just want to watch the world burn.”

So do some machines. But there may be a way of turning off the Entity’s motor, if Hunt and his cronies — including tech wizards Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames) and Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg), and warrior/love interest Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) — can obtain both halves of a gem-studded cruciform key that looks like it was filched from an “Indiana Jones” movie.

The hunt for the two parts of the key leads Hunt to the Abu Dhabi airport, one of the film’s many global stops, where the hyperkinetic Hunt sprints atop the main terminal, apparently because it just looks so cool.

He runs into a master thief named Grace (Hayley Atwell), who is very good at getting what she wants from both pockets and people. Grace isn’t sure she wants to assist the IMF, even if it means saving the world.

Grace’s energetic presence makes her the film’s secret weapon and most valuable female, in a femme-forward movie that also includes, along with the versatile Ferguson, star turns from another series newcomer, Pom Klementieff, who plays a French assassin, and returning talent Vanessa Kirby, who reprises her “White Widow” character from “Fallout.”

A laugh-out-loud chase scene in the streets of Rome finds Hunt and Grace handcuffed together and obliged to jointly operate a tiny yellow Fiat, making moves not sanctioned by the carmaker or the law. This and other quick-witted encounters bring to mind the felicitous pairing of Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn in “Charade,” Stanley Donen’s screwball action film released 60 years ago this year, and also the more recent Pierce Brosnan/Michelle Yeoh matchup in the 007 film “Tomorrow Never Dies.”

“Dead Reckoning” first and foremost belongs to its most dedicated player, actor/producer Cruise, who continues to insist on doing his own stunts, even as they become ever more threatening to life and limb.

The main one this time is a doozy: a motorcycle jump off a 4,000-foot cliff and a perilous parachute drop into a rocky ravine. Cruise managed to pull this feat off not just once but eight times to get it exactly right for the IMAX-friendly digital cameras.

They’re calling it his most dangerous stunt ever. He prepared for it for more than a year, practising with 13,000 motocross jumps and 500 skydives.

This not only seems impossible but also downright crazy. It makes for a fine night out at the movies, perched on the edge of your seat.

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