Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning, Part One (2023)

As I walked out of the theater for Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, Part One (a movie title with far too much punctuation), a woman sitting in the hallway asked me, expectantly and warily, “Is it any good?” With a hasty sigh, I assured her, “It’s fantastic,” realizing only then that the movie had taken my breath away. “Lots of action?” she asked, and I promised, “You have no idea.”
 
I hope she enjoyed it – indeed, I almost stuck around to see if she had, because as much as I’ve hemmed and hawed with blockbuster movies lately, as much as I’ve been besieged by fatigue and corporate horse-trading, Dead Reckoning is the first theatrical release in a long time that felt like an absolute blast: ten out of ten, no notes.
 
Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is back, on the trail of two halves of a mysterious key that will unlock one of the world’s deadliest weapons. His newest mission reunites his old friends Luther (Ving Rhames) and Benji (Simon Pegg) with the disavowed MI6 agent Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) against the shadowy Gabriel (Esai Morales), his assassin Paris (Pom Klementieff), and pickpocket Grace (Hayley Atwell), caught in the middle of a case that goes back to Ethan’s first days with the IMF.
 
Your mileage may vary on the first two Mission: Impossible films, but there’s no question that the series well and truly hit its stride with 2015’s Rogue Nation, the fifth in the franchise and the first pairing Tom Cruise with director Christopher McQuarrie. Dead Reckoning is McQuarrie’s third outing with the IMF, and if there’s a pocket he’s firmly in it. Since McQuarrie’s arrival, Mission: Impossible has been a racecar in the red, constantly accelerating and delivering consistent thrills that somehow, time and again, find a way to make a tense situation even more nail-biting. What’s not to love about an action film so confident that its first trailer consisted merely of a single stunt and the relentless insistence that, yes, Tom Cruise really drove a motorbike off a mountain? 
 
And even while we’ve seen that stunt over and over again, there is nevertheless a charm and an intensity in the film finally reaching that moment – and then overpowering it, again and again, in a climactic sequence that protracts the audience’s anxiety by making a certain situation unfathomably worse and worse. As a third act setpiece, it’s a definitional moment for the film, which packs all its character beats and espionage plots into one orchestral symphony of chaos aboard the Orient Express. Agatha Christie, eat your heart out; Poirot’s mere murder inquiry can’t hold a candle to the finale of Dead Reckoning. 
 
At two hours and forty-three minutes, Dead Reckoning has a runtime that would make any lesser action movie buckle. Even Dial of Destiny, which I more or less loved, felt a little baggy at two-thirty-four, yet Dead Reckoning clips along, even through preposterous scenes of outlandish didactic dialogue. Buoying even clunky exposition like “The only thing that’s real is this conversation,” what sells the film is the earnest investment we feel between these characters, the genuine care they have for each other. I rewatched the films about two years ago, and even so the chemistry between Ving Rhames and Simon Pegg did more heavy lifting for me than my memory of their friendship in the preceding films. If they’re being playful with each other, we know things will be fine, but the script deftly maneuvers into those moments where conversation becomes deadly serious, raising the ante to a painful degree.
 
Even in a franchise where anyone could be wearing a rubber mask, where death is often just a fake-out, the tension in this film is almost unbearable. The audience knows that Ethan Hunt – that Tom Cruise – is bulletproof, and yet I found myself wheezing with fear each time he flirted with sudden death. McQuarrie is a master magician in this sense, fully immersing the audience in the cinematic illusion of danger. In my review of Fallout, I had said that McQuarrie seemed constantly to be asking, “But what if it were on fire?” And that impulse to ratchet up the stakes persists into Dead Reckoning; there’s a car chase, yes, but the car has no doors, and its occupants are handcuffed in a way that makes driving a challenge – and, of course, there’s a baby carriage in their way. My audience was laughing and gasping in equal measure, a rapturous burst of applause just when things cleared up, only to reveal the light at the end of the tunnel to be, quite literally, an oncoming subway train.
 
That pesky Part One in the title gave me some degree of pause. I thought we’d cleared that hurdle back in the days of Harry Potter and The Hunger Games, and yet we have films like Across the Spider-Verse and Dune taking a year’s hiatus without fully concluding their narratives. There’s so much more to come in Dead Reckoning, Part Two, and yet McQuarrie hasn’t given us half of a story. He’s given us a full film (and then some), albeit with a major door left open for the sequel. That’s not to say that I couldn’t have easily gone another three hours – I could have – but at least this time I don’t feel like my attendance at the next film is taken for granted. Rather, Part One more than earns the right to expect me to come back for more. 
 
Back when Fallout debuted, I called Mission: Impossible “the little franchise that could.” But after 27 years and seven outings, I think it’s safe to say that it’s the persistent and consistent franchise that shows everyone else how it’s done.
 

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, Part One is rated PG-13 for “intense sequences of violence and action, some language, and suggestive material.” Directed by Christopher McQuarrie. Written by Christopher McQuarrie and Erik Jendresen. Starring Tom Cruise, Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Vanessa Kirby, Esai Morales, Pom Klementieff, and Henry Czerny.

Mission: Impossible - Fallout (2018)

In a word, wow. I’m a week late to the Mission: Impossible – Fallout party, and while I would have liked to have seen the film in an entirely packed house, the fact is that Fallout is such a punchy film, so aggressively laced with adrenaline and bombast, that I suspect it’d work just as well on an airplane headrest as in a half-packed IMAX auditorium. It’s a film bursting with energy, firing on more cylinders than you knew a film could have, with a clever knack for surprise. The more hyperbolic in the review community are calling it one of the greatest action films of all time, and while that’s a bridge I’m not ready to cross just yet, I’ll say it’s an appropriate accolade because Mission: Impossible – Fallout is one of the finer action films in recent memory.

In the fallout (see what we did there?) of Rogue Nation, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is still working to dismantle the terror network organizing in the wake of Solomon Lane (Sean Harris). After his team (comprised of Ving Rhames and Simon Pegg) loses a cache of plutonium to Lane’s successors, Ethan is assigned a CIA escort (Henry Cavill) to make sure the weapons are recovered. Little does Ethan know that former MI6 agent Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) is also chasing the plutonium, in a globetrotting chase that will lead Ethan closer to Lane than he imagined.

As someone who still hasn’t seen the first three Mission: Impossible movies (and with no legitimate reason for not having done so), I’m always a little surprised to think that this is a 22-year franchise with six films, a consistent lead, and an ability to persist without getting bogged down in reinventing itself or in lingering slavishly on the past. It is, in a sense, the purest version of a franchise, shaving off what didn’t work in the last installment and inheriting only a bare skeleton on which to hang a powerful action story. With returning director Christopher McQuarrie (the first time the franchise has brought back a previous helmsman), there are nods back to Rogue Nation, but the story is constructed in such a way that Fallout may as well be a standalone.

And boy does it work. The action setpieces are remarkable, literally breathtaking in a way that lets you temporarily forget the indestructibility of Tom Cruise (both on screen and, evidently, in real life, thanks to his much-ballyhooed refusal of a stuntman). These action scenes are refreshing for their clarity, astonishing in their choreography, and addictively compelling for their ability to raise the stakes like a cinematic Shepard tone. There’s a second-act car chase in Paris that feels like The Dark Knight had a baby with The French Connection, which includes also a motorcycle chase, a shootout, and a marine getaway for good measure; just when you think the fever has pitched, McQuarrie finds a way to raise the mercury with another twist. It’s as if McQuarrie, pulling double-duty as screenwriter, looked at each bad-as-it-can-get moment in the film and asked, “But what if it were on fire?”

Fallout is a movie that feels like anything could happen, but all under the umbrella of certainty that the good guys will prevail and, in fact, that they always already have it in the bag. Between the rubber face-changing masks, the continual double-cross reversals, and the sheer unstoppability of Ethan Hunt (who can, if the occasion requires, pilot a helicopter with no training or reorganize a hostage extraction with minimal time to prepare), Fallout is a movie that just feels right, leaving an audience with a big dumb grin. It’s a movie that doesn’t need a lot of frilly analysis because the movie is very no-frills in its approach to earnest straightforward action. There are a lot of moving parts in the film, with action sequences evolving and morphing even as the plot splinters and diverges. At one point, just when things start to go smoothly and umpteen new challenges arise, Cavill bursts out, “Why do you have to make everything so f—ing complicated?!” If Fallout is overly complicated, it’s in service to the immense satisfaction to be gained once Ethan barrels through the problem with a direct and unilateral solution that takes not a single human life. Ethan Hunt is an American James Bond, yes, but he’s also at home in the superhero genre because of his abiding belief that no mission is worth the life of a teammate; his super power is that aforementioned jack-of-all-trades ability to roll with any punch and salvage any mission gone awry.

The real thrill, then, is not in whether Ethan and the IMF will save the day, because of course they will. It’s in how much will be thrown their way, how much they have to overcome, and how creative a solution they’ll devise to get there. It’s in the payoff when you discover all the steps that have led to this moment, all the ways Ethan has prepared to get what he needs and how much he’ll have to improvise along the way. It’s a lot of fun; I can’t overstate how compulsively fun this movie is and how thoroughly it earns all the moments you want to stand up and cheer, little frissons when Chekhov’s gun gets to fire. If Sicario was the unlikely franchise, Mission: Impossible is the little franchise that could, and it’s earned its day on the hill.

Mission: Impossible – Fallout is rated PG-13 for “violence and intense sequences of action, and for brief strong language.” Written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie. Starring Tom Cruise, Henry Cavill, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Sean Harris, Angela Bassett, Michelle Monaghan, Vanessa Kirby, and Alec Baldwin.

Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (2015)

I think I missed a memo, because in the last few years, Ethan Hunt has managed to become the American James Bond (Jack Ryan might have had that title long ago, but I was one of only a few who liked his most recent appearance). It’s a bit of a surprise that a franchise which began nineteen years ago is having something of a resurgence in the last five years, but if the series continues to be as good as its latest outing, Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation, Tom Cruise may end up giving 007 a run for his money. (He’s already played the part longer than anyone played Bond, besting Roger Moore’s 12 years.)

After a Senate hearing disbands the IMF, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) finds himself cut off in the middle of a global search for the invisible Syndicate, a network of terrorists whose existence is doubted by nearly everyone. With the scantest of leads, Hunt seeks help from his tech-savvy comrade Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg) while continually crossing paths with the mysterious Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson), whose true allegiance is perpetually in doubt.

The James Bond comparison is really and truly invited by Rogue Nation (perhaps more than its immediate predecessor, Ghost Protocol), which begins with a Bond-style opening sequence in which Ethan boards a plane mid-flight from the outside. This audacious stunt, which Cruise performed himself, sets a tone for the film that roots Rogue Nation in an era where action films tried to show moviegoers something they hadn’t seen before, rather than aim first to outdo the competition or just outthink the audience.

As I said of Ghost Protocol, the joy of these films is that they don’t focus so much on transcending the genre as they do on playing very well within the established conventions of the espionage narrative. What’s even more refreshing is the way the films recall the early Bond films’ one-and-done format, without baiting the audience back for a sequel or relying on their memory of a small detail from movies past. As someone who hasn’t seen the first three (but who now wants to, desperately), it’s striking how well the film introduces its main characters, some of whom have been around since 1996. I hadn’t met Ving Rhames’s Luther before, but I had a good sense of who he was and how he fit into the story because the film has a very acute sense of narrative integrity, respecting its audience enough to give us a complete experience.

Rogue Nation is spectacle cinema doing what it ought to do with neither pretension nor laziness. With each Mission Impossible film directed by a different person, I think there’s less of a burden to outdo oneself or someone else, and more room to focus on the quality of the experience itself. Director Christopher McQuarrie, reuniting with Cruise after the very compelling Jack Reacher, has a knack for stories told well without compromising clarity, and the surprising sense of humor from Edge of Tomorrow (which he cowrote) is present also in Rogue Nation, punctuating moments of tension with unexpected moments of delight.

I had gone to see Rogue Nation because an action film always looks better on the big screen, and I’d had such a good time with Ghost Protocol that I wanted to give the franchise another look. Now that Mission Impossible is two for two, it’s probably time for me to go to the back catalog, because now I have a brand that I trust. If nothing else, I have something to tide me over until Ethan Hunt’s British counterpart returns to theaters, and something to which I can look forward when the inevitable sixth Mission Impossible film debuts. That’s my mission, and I do choose to accept it.

Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation is rated PG-13 for “sequences of action and violence, and brief partial nudity.” There are quite a few action set pieces with chasing and fighting, but it’s mostly bloodless; there’s a somewhat intense scene where a character is deprived of oxygen for minutes at a time. A woman removes her top, but it’s seen from behind with no visible nudity.

Piranha 3D (2010)

When all is said and done, one of the big entertainment headlines at the end of the year will undoubtedly be, "Piranha 3D scores 80% - and above - on Rotten Tomatoes." If you don't believe me, go ahead and look it up. I don't blame you, because the movie is as unmitigatedly terrible as it sounds.

It must come as some surprise that The Cinema King voluntarily sat through what must undoubtedly be one of the worst movies of this year; I'm still a little bit surprised myself that it happened. But, on the advice of a friend who had heretofore never been wrong about pop culture (a fan of Lost and one of the parties responsible for introducing me to Dexter), I plopped into a seat as the lights began to darken and readied myself for a movie that would prove all my suspicions unfounded.

As the lights came back up, I was still waiting for that movie. Because what I got was exactly what I expected - a B-movie (not to impugn the B-movies that originally initiated that descriptor) with a pitiable premise, predominantly poorly acted and largely without the tongue in cheek nature that would have been needed to pull off the picture. Sorry, buddy, you're now on my grain-of-salt list.

Piranha 3D almost defies the convention of a premise, because all you need to know is in the title - there are piranhas, and this movie is in 3D. The film takes place during spring break on geographically ambiguous Lake Victoria, where scores of party-prepared college students let loose their inhibitions and dive in for the time of their lives. But, as Horatio Caine famously noted of spring break, "It should have been the time of her life... *dons sunglasses* ...instead of the end of it." After devouring Richard Dreyfuss (present, it seems, as an oblique homage to the aquatic horror genre's granddaddy Jaws), the aforementioned piranhas set their fangs on the aforementioned college students, Sheriff Julie Forester (Elisabeth Shue) and her deputy (Ving Rhames), adult film producer Derrick Jones (Jerry O'Connell, who chews scenery like a human piranha), and Derrick's new albeit reluctant stars Jake (Steven R. McQueen) and Kelly (Jessica Szohr, who seems to be standing in for Vanessa Hudgens). Oh yeah, and Christopher Lloyd is in it as the resident piranha expert/exposition wholesaler.

The biggest problem with Piranha 3D is that there's just no life in it. On the surface, it all seems like a good idea, as though there's going to be some rip-roaring good satire at work, with riotously overdrawn characters in preposterous situations spouting off one-liners that will become part of the cultural lexicon. But instead what we get is something that claims to be that but carries itself off fairly straightforwardly, adhering religiously to all of the horror film tropes that it should be lampooning - first attack, innocuous setting, sexy teens vs. authority, last scare (in fact, this is played for laughs, but it's so overwrought that it's tantamount to when Joel McHale photoshops people getting hit by a bus on The Soup), &c. Though it's supposedly a comic horror film, there's little to laugh at in the first hour or so of the movie; O'Connell is so hammy you'll start to smell pork chops after a while, but it's so overblown that all I could muster was a dismissive eye-roll at how hard he was trying.

It's not until the last twenty minutes or so (I know, because I checked my watch periodically - something I never do during movies I even close to enjoy... something I didn't even do during Nic Cage's The Wicker Man, my favorite bad movie) that Piranha 3D starts to have fun with itself, introducing wildly fantastic Robert Rodriguez-style sequences that are so over-the-top that the film should have been littered with them. For example, Ving Rhames at one delightfully giddy moment, tears the motor off a boat and uses the propeller as a chainsaw to fend off encroaching piranhas (piranhi? piranhae?); had the movie been comprised of more scenes like that - and had Adam Scott been given more lines as the geologist with a sardonic wit - the movie might have been more of a success. But no, instead we get two minutes of naked water ballet, a moment whose only function in the film seems to be to inspire word of mouth: "Hey, let's go see Piranha 3D." "I don't know; I heard it was bad." "Who cares, dude? Naked water ballet!" "I am so there!"

That's another chief complaint about Piranha 3D - the nudity. I should have known going into it that this was a movie that wasn't going to hold back, but I was expecting the go-for-broke attitude to come from a degree of satire. Not so; the film is apparently governed by the mentality that, if your film is starting to sink, just throw some skin up on the screen. Now, it's a spring break movie, and I get that it would have probably earned the filmmakers some critical ire if they did a spring break movie that didn't include at least a bit of gratuitous nudity (the old standby of the horror genre, after all), but it's just so exorbitant here. I don't want to come off as some sort of puritanical nut, because that's not it at all; it's just that the film uses nudity as a crutch, and it comes off as excessive, exorbitant, distracting, and desperate. Where nudity has been used as a deceptive counterpoint to violence/horror to come or as a way to elicit a cheap laugh, Piranha 3D seems to have taken its storyboards, thrown darts at them, and inserted a naked person wherever said darts landed.

There are other offenses at stake here, too - Christopher Lloyd is criminally mis- and under-used here; I haven't seen him in a very long time, but it's a shame that he's here instead of somewhere where his talents would be well-served. Moments of peril are very predictable, such that it's very easy to identify which of the four characters on screen will be eaten, and in which order. And the gore is used so heavily and with so little moral compass that some of the aftermath scenes play out more like Schindler's List than Shaun of the Dead. But the greatest sin that Piranha 3D commits is that it's not fun enough to justify the upcharge for 3D glasses. Indeed, the 3D effects aren't all that great, either. There's one moment where a character throws up directly into the camera that at least gets that visceral reaction, but most of the 3D effects rely on recycled gags from old Dr. Tongue bits from SCTV (the difference being that Dr. Tongue's 3-D House of Beef had punchlines and class). Piranha 3D marks the first time that I've really noticed a murky and unpolished look to movies that have been converted to 3D - a problem I've never encountered with, say, Disney's 3D effects. Perhaps it's just that, like everything else about this movie, the effects aren't very good at all. In fact, they downright bite (sorry).

For the first time since I don't remember when (possibly ever), I was inspired to ask for my money back as the credits rolled on Piranha 3D. But it soon occurred to me that all I would get would be a blank stare, a blink or two, and the response, "Look, you volunteered to see a movie entitled Piranha 3D. What'd you expect, Shakespeare?" I also chickened out because I realized I would have to admit to another living soul that I shelled out money to see this movie. Oh, wait.
Piranha 3D is rated R "for sequences of strong bloody horror violence and gore, graphic nudity, sexual content, language and some drug use." This is probably the least appropriate theatrical release this year, with many graphic feeding scenes in which the piranhas chomp away pieces of people until all that is left are bloody skeletons. There's toplessness and rear nudity galore, F-bombs a-plenty, and enough alcohol and cocaine to make Ozzy Osbourne look up. Even though there are kids in the movie (added, doubtless, as an attempt to build suspense even though we know kids are invincible in horror movies), leave yours at home.