Tom Cruise keeps the torch alight in Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One
Harry Khachatrian
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It was in 1986, in The Color of Money, an often-overlooked Martin Scorsese film, that a 61-year-old Paul Newman, the action icon and ’60s heartthrob, metaphorically passed the torch to a then-budding Tom Cruise, marking a new era of Hollywood stardom.
Fast forward to 2023, and we find Cruise, now 61 himself and the most prominent contemporary action star by a fair margin, showing no signs of relinquishing this accolade. In his latest iteration of Mission Impossible, Dead Reckoning Part One, Cruise is as energetic and compelling as ever.
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In an era in which social media and streaming platforms have dulled the luster of traditional movie stars, supplanting them with franchise-based blockbusters, Cruise continues to orchestrate and pull off his own death-defying stunts, a resilient vestige of a fading breed. While Mission Impossible is undeniably a franchise, it’s Cruise himself who serves as its key attraction. This sharply contrasts with Disney’s revenue juggernaut, The Avengers, which instead capitalizes on its vast wardrobe of spandex-clad superheroes.
In Dead Reckoning, Tom Cruise reprises the role of IMF agent Ethan Hunt. Set in a fantasy world wherein the Russian military has developed the world’s most advanced and undetectable submarine — it is not mentioned if Russia achieved this military prowess while two years deep into its indefinite and stalled incursion to seize Kyiv — the sequel revolves around an artificial intelligence, akin to ChatGPT on steroids, that the Americans somehow implanted onto the sub, unbeknownst to the Russians.
The AI’s predictable ascension to sentience and, contrary to electromagnetics, its act of beaming itself through the ocean surface and into the public internet, sets the stage for disparate world powers and self-interests vying for control over the rogue technology via a key that grants the wielder access to its source code.
Despite a somewhat tenuous grasp of computer science principles, Mission Impossible has remained remarkably resilient. It is arguably the only long-standing franchise, currently in its seventh iteration, that continues to generate anticipation and buzz, rather than indifference or even derision, with each new release. Dead Reckoning is awash in the signature hallmarks of the franchise: latex mask disguises, intense car chases that put Fast and Furious to shame, and a full budget dedicated to capturing myriad camera angles of Tom Cruise sprinting.
The U.S. government covets the advanced AI for its own interests, tasking the IMF with procuring its key. Ethan Hunt, who has evidently seen all the Terminator films, demurs with his director’s ostensible altruism and contends that it must be destroyed rather than wielded for a feigned greater good. Despite the quips about his height, Cruise’s mission is comically evocative of Frodo Baggins in Lord of the Rings.
Dead Reckoning features a digital villain fit for a digital age. Referred to only as “the entity,” this sentient AI is personified through the new character Gabriel (Esai Morales). Like most late-era franchise entries, Dead Reckoning reaches back into the early days of Ethan Hunt’s escapades to invent a new villain, one never alluded to before and only briefly outlined in this installment. As with “part one” films, it leaves a marked dearth of backstory and character development — a shortfall that its sequel will hopefully address.
The supporting cast in Dead Reckoning is as impressive as ever. Favorites Simon Pegg and Ving Rhames reprise their roles as Benji Dunn and Luther Stickell, respectively, providing welcome doses of comic relief amid the high stakes.
However, it’s the introduction of Hayley Atwell as Grace, a cunning international thief, that distinguishes Dead Reckoning. Sharing a palpable chemistry with Cruise, the shrewd pickpocket pursues her own interests. Seeking the same AI-controlling key, the two find their disparate motivations intersecting, leading to such gripping scenes as the pair being chased through Rome’s narrow alleyways, handcuffed to each other, and crammed in a tiny vintage Fiat.
Most modern sequels and remakes have flopped or faltered, opting to assuage contemporary exigencies at the expense of the hallmarks that made them a success in the first place. Two notable exceptions are Top Gun: Maverick and Dead Reckoning, both films made by Tom Cruise with only one agenda in mind: to entertain audiences and give them a reason to flock back to the cinema — to see the stars shine.
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Harry Khachatrian (@Harry1T6) is a film critic for the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog and a computer engineer in Toronto, pursuing his MBA.