Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning’ on Paramount+, in Which a Killer Franchise Keeps on Cruising

See Tom run. Run, Tom, run. Tom Cruise runs and runs and runs in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning (now streaming on Paramount+, in addition to VOD services like Amazon Prime Video), the seventh film in what’s best referred to as one hell of a franchise. The series essentially belongs to Cruise and director/co-writer Christopher McQuarrie (who helmed the previous two films, including 2018’s Fallout, which may go down as the series’ best), partners in pushing the envelope for hair-raising action. Also, did you know Tom Cruise does his own stunts? You may have heard that somewhere before. Well, it’s true! And that commitment to high-risk thrills shows in a handful of showstopper sequences here, which are surely the reason the film cost nearly $300 million to make. Oddly, possibly due to the public being bewildered by the Barbenheimer phenomenon, Dead Reckoning 1 did only modest box office numbers – $567 million worldwide, falling more than a couple hundred mil short of the previous film, and not even close to the $1.5 billion Cruise’s Top Gun: Maverick raked in  – but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t kick ass for multiple reasons I’ll outline here.

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – DEAD RECKONING: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: THE BERING SEA, reads a subtitle. 58° 31’ 00.8” N, 176° 13’ 12.6” W, it continues. Is that important to know? I can’t answer that. But it’s funny. Anyway. That’s where a Russian submarine cruises, deep beneath the ice. It’s on board this vessel we learn of the existence of a cross-shaped key consisting of two interlocking pieces. Does the key look like something that’s so important, the next 2.75 hours will consist of people trying to acquire it? Damn right it does. Do we care why? Almost, because it’s just a MacGuffin, and we’re here for the chases and shootouts and shit, chases and shootouts that occur because the key activates an artificially intelligent computer that gives the keyholder the power to – what exactly? Rule the whole damn world, that’s what. No biggie. 

Thus begins the most existentially terrifying and ironic M:I plot yet – terrifying because a global AI takeover seems disturbingly plausible here in 2023, and ironic because McQuarrie and Cruise are so committed to using practical effects rendered by real humans in physical spaces. At this point, our guy Ethan Hunt (Cruise) gets his this-message-will-self-destruct mission: Take a vacation. No! Actually, he’s gotta get his hands on that key, both halves of it. His old friend Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) has one of them, and he finds her in the (reads a subtitle) Arabian desert. It’s around this point that Ethan learns the key’s function, and determines that nobody, even his U.S. gov employer, should have control of an AI “that’s everywhere and nowhere and has no center” and is a “new incontestable form of global dominance.” Yikes! And so he and his coworker pals Benji (Simon Pegg) and Luther (Ving Rhames) go rogue, and thus sayeth Benji: “As we like to call it, Monday.”

Please note that summaries of M:I plots are simplified out of necessity, one, because we can’t be spoiling anything, and two, because they’re famously, hilariously convoluted, and we don’t have all day. So let’s just get to some of the other players involved: The biggest is Grace (Hayley Atwell), a hella wily superthief who tries to snatch the half-key from Ethan and may inspire us to shift our ’shipping wish from Ilsa-Ethan to Grace-Ethan. Gabriel (Esai Morales) is an evil guy who we see in flashbacks to Ethan’s early days, and is working in partnership with the AI; Paris (Pom KIementieff) is the kickass ass-kicker in his employ. Alanna (Vanessa Kirby), also known as The White Widow, is a black market arms broker who wants to steal the key and sell it for a gazillion dollars. CIA director Kittredge (Henry Czerny, reprising his role from the first M:I) has his hands in all this, and sics two U.S. agents (Shea Whigham and Greg Tarzan Davis) on Ethan, which, hey, good luck with that, guys. And then there’s The Entity, the AI itself, played by Your Greatest Fears. Who says these movies have no basis in reality?

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Dead Reckoning — don’t you dare call it Part 1! — exists neatly alongside another uber-dynamic 2023 action exihilirator, John Wick 4, because they’re both great and they’re both rooted in physical comedy and you should see them both. It also shares many parallels between another recent underperforming franchise entry, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny: Decades-long series, beloved but aging lead, enjoyable combination of action and comedy, crazy sequence set on an out-of-control train, ludicrous plot, even more ludicrous budget. But that’s where the comparison ends, because Indy spent a lot of money on crappy CG, and Dead Reckoning spent a lot of money on… insurance premiums for Cruise so he could launch a motorcycle off a cliff then parachute down? Seems probable.

Performance Worth Watching: Cruise’s teeth-clenched, redfaced commitment to intensity has never been less in question. That’s not a surprise. So let’s use this space to commend a few enjoyably colorful one-note performances from franchise newcomers: Atwell’s considerable charm in what’s almost a co-lead role. That psycho-diabolical look in Kirby’s eye and haltingly villainous line readings. Klementieff and her crazylady laughs as she tries to kill our heroes. And Whigham, who, with his contemptuous sneer, is best described as positively Whighamesque.

Memorable Dialogue: Dare you not to laugh when Whigham delivers this description of Ethan Hunt: “He is not to be underestimated. A master of infiltration, sabotage and psych warfare. For all intents and purposes, ladies and gentlemen, a mind-reading, shape-shifting incarnation of chaos.”

Sex and Skin: Nope! (This may be why Ethan Hunt is wound so tight.)

Our Take: It’s no secret that this is only half a story, to be continued in the summer of 2024 – but in spite of an absolutely literal cliffhanger ending in which Ethan ends up dangling from a terrifying height, Dead Reckoning is still reasonably climactic and satisfying on its own, even though Things haven’t been fully Wrapped Up. It says something that the desire to roll right into Part Two exists despite a 163-minute run time; it’s the exhilaration of a robust workout we feel, not the exhaustion of a long and wearying sit.

Of course McQuarrie and Cruise deliver thrills that have us sweating in our seats as we vicariously feel – not watch, or sense, but feel – the danger of precarious elevations and whizzing bullets and gleaming-sharp knives and claustrophobically tight spaces and relentless speeds. That’s why we’re here. They stage an amusing cat-and-mouse game in the Abu Dhabi airport, a chase that begins at a wild Venice party and spills out into cobblestone streets for hand-to-hand combat in front of gorgeously lit postcard scenery and an Orient-express derailment into mighty spectacle. The pièce de résistance is a rousing pedal-to-the-metal screech-and-peel through Rome that’s as close to slapstick as a car chase can possibly get, Klementieff cackling as she smashes through obstacles with a Humvee, gunning it after Ethan and Grace as they’re handcuffed together in a rollerskate of a nerdmobile Fiat, a legion of hapless cops in pursuit. It’s a blend of comedy and action that the Fast and Furious movies never get close to achieving.

In the context of the franchise, Dead Reckoning doesn’t quite one-up its predecessor (and series pinnacle) Fallout, but who’s complaining? It adheres to a winning formula with Cruise as the virtuous, self-sacrificing meta-daredevil surrounded by whipsmart enablers (Pegg, Rhames), charismatic almost-allies (Atwell, Ferguson) and colorful chaosmongers (Kirby, Klementieff), all thrown into an exquisitely calculated array of memorable and creative set pieces. The plot, as usual, is curlicued unto absurdity, and the peaks-and-valleys screenplay goes from silly to SERIOUS to silly to SERIOUS as wild action trades off with brooding, catch-up/take-a-breath exposition. McQuarrie and Cruise push the franchise into fresh thematic places via an AI-generated existential threat, which seems far more relevant than the usual world-saving plot-device MacGuffin pursuit; it’s rare that a Mission: Impossible serves up a truly frightening villain, a bellowing Philip Seymour Hoffman notwithstanding. Here’s hoping Ethan and co. win the day in Dead Reckoning Part Two – I’ll be right there in the moment to see if they do, and if you watch this crackerjack blast of a movie, you absolutely will be too.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Another Mission: Impossible film, another winner.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.