acid reflects

One thing raced through my mind while watching Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One: has anyone clocked how far Tom Cruise has run while filming all the Mission Impossible films?

Cruise’s dedication to do his stunts himself – famously breaking his ankle after jumping across a rooftop while filming Fallout – isn’t just legendary, it’s inspiring. Cruise recently declared in an interview that he hopes to continue filming Impossible until he’s great-grandaddy 80.

But my mind was into more trivial things, like how many thrillers have featured Venice, or which spy films have been on The Orient Express.

Because, spectacular may be the stunts and action set pieces in all Mission Impossible films, Dead Reckoning runs flat in the screenplay department.

To wit: a secret agent runs to the distant city of Alphaville to find a missing person and free the city from its dictator and his evil sentient computer system.

That’s the logline of the 1965 French New Wave sci-fi film Alphaville by Jean Luc Godard.

I had to dig a little to find out how long cinema has been playing around with spies vs computers (and also The Orient Express – more on that later) and I found out that it has been doing so for quite a while.

You see, Dead Reckoning is a very capable action thriller that has the minor handicap of an overused plotline and cringeworthy dialogue. This is just par for the course in terms of the Impossible brand from TV long ago, so that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Far from being a deal breaker. But it is what it is.

Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) has been running about catching the bad guys since he accepted to join the force (the Impossible kind, not midichlorian) back in 1996 (!). (I mean, when did running become Ethan’s bio?)

Cruise and writer-director Christopher McQuarrie has established a long history of collaboration since Jack Reacher in 2012. It’s quite possible for McQuarrie to have written an outline that would eventually be mounted as a movie’s action set piece that came from a stunt idea by Cruise. What I’m saying is that we see the results of this creative relationship as well-crafted, carefully choreographed sequences that register spectacularly onscreen. It’s like Cruise + McQuarrie = we better see it.

SPOILER WARNING – PLOT ELEMENTS –

I will try not to put so much detail into this review to not ruin anyone’s experience, but what else can I say? I can’t review the stunts, I have no expertise on them.

In Dead Reckoning, a rogue AI program has become sentient, and the Impossible Missions Force is out to retrieve two pieces of a key that can literally unlock the AI’s computer and deactivate it.

Former MI6 agent Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) found one piece of the key, which lands in the hands of the IMF. In the course of tracking the second piece, a talented thief (Grace, played by Hayley Atwell) manages to steal the first piece from the IMF team for an unknown collector. Meanwhile, a ghost from Ethan’s past – Gabriel (Esai Morales) – resurfaces as the face of the AI sentient entity which seeks the key so that nothing can stop its plans to dominate the planet.

Vhing Rhames and Simon Pegg return as Luther and Benji, respectively, who complete the IMF team helping Ethan. Henry Czerny reprises his role as Kittridge, now the Director of the CIA. Vanessa Kirby also returns as The White Widow, while Pom Klemintieff of Guardians of the Galaxy steals her scenes as the lethal assassin Paris.

Tensions run high all throughout the film, as McQuarrie deftly uses his choreographed visuals to heighten suspense, and lets his characters do the talking to expose the plot. Any confusion that can slow down the action is removed by endless exposition in voiceover (usually by Luther) intercut with the carefully edited action, in a constant demonstration of tell-and-tell. That’s expert handling of a choppy story using the language of film. Cringey language, mind you. “The world is changing, truth is vanishing. War is coming,” said The White Widow. Ungh. Annoying? Yes. But the action never stops.

One thing that’s surely relentless in the film is its musical score. In a bad theater, your eardrums can get a serious beating.

The film’s piece de resistance is the lengthy action set piece that is The Orient Express. This, just months after seeing the relentless action in a train in Extraction 2. The base jump off the mountain cliff used to promote the film? It’s just a piece of the Orient action sequence.

A 1937 film by the name of Espionage (based on a stage play of the same name) is apparently the first spy film set on The Orient Express. Although, the 1927 German silent Orient Express was a thriller. Even James Bond set his feet on the train in From Russia With Love in 1963.

The said Dead Reckoning sequence on the Orient is around 44 minutes of story and action which manage to squeeze in some humor in between the plot and action. And the last few minutes are simply heart-stopping thrills, it’s nerve-racking.

“We cannot escape the past. Some of us are doomed to repeat it.” said Kittridge. Plot is Hollywood generic. But if Tom Cruise won’t quit running, so shouldn’t we.

It’s a mission to keep watching Tom Cruise on screen. We need Part Two soon.

Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One is in theaters now.

(Images and link from Paramount Pictures)