At 61, Tom Cruise is already on his seventh impossible mission. Far from retirement at age 64, one of the last actors in the great Hollywood resumes service in the first part of Dead Reckoning with, once not customary, Christopher MacQuarrie at the controls. Almost three hours of great show. What can we do to hurt James Bond?
Complotwist?
Since Mission: Impossible of the Brian De Palma released in 1996, a gallery of characters came to join Ethan and Kittridge in their fight against great international banditry. This good old Tom will have worked against viruses like the Chimera, his organization will have been discredited in Ghost Protocol And he even had to face the Union, an organization of super criminals who held the beautiful part of the last episodes.
Hard, hard life artist! It is now in the face of an indomitable AI, the Entité, that Ethan will be confronted in this film in two parts. With a " amusing" proximity to conspiracy theories on a New World Order, Dead Reckoning approaches a world won by the post truth where the true is a time of falsehood, one dared to say.
Capable of singing the most sophisticated systems as demonstrated with panache by the introductory scene of the submarine Sevastopol, the Entity is the Holy Grail for the veroleous states that have perfectly accomplished their safe moult. Video facial recognition, AI, stamping, everything goes there to ensure public order. Rather than destroying the Entity, the secret services will race to seize two complementary keys so that they can take over the world stage.
While the debate on the scenarios has re-emerged with excitement on social networks, it can be said that Dead Reckoning is it well written? With its riddle of characters from past episodes, the film plays the card of fan service overtly. There's always a ridiculous side to see these teams.Avengers The poor make up and decompose as the episodes progress. And no doubt this seventh opus does not shine by its original writing but more by the effectiveness of its staging.
With episodes and twists to gogo, the saga did not necessarily shine by its story that flirts with the nanar. Rather, it is the desire to redo the Hollywood coat of arms that seduces with perilous waterfalls realized by Tom Cruise himself. Perched on a plane in full take-off, parachute, motorcycle or any other motorized vehicle, Tom Cruise's reputation is no longer to be done. The actor seems ever more comfortable, episode by episode, he who even knew how to resurrect the legend of Top Gun exploding the box office.
Need for Speed
New opus obliges, the foal of Scientology does not deviate from the rule with particularly inspired pursuit races, especially in the streets of Rome in a small fiat 500 boosted with nitroglycerin way Need for Speed, all handcuffed to his unfortune partner. A crazy sequence in the Italian capital where the two actors led in particularly daring conditions. Hat!
Question rhythm, Dead Reckoning In the wake of the dead-time situation, there is an adrenaline deluge whose apotheosis will be reached during the train scene. The latter is not without recalling The Lost World. Although not as crazy as Spielberg's sequence, it remains significant.
If American action cinema is increasingly criticized for its overbidding of green screens and CGI integrations for everything and anything, what about Dead Reckoning ? So yes, Tom Cruise plays the acrobats but don't imagine that the film has been completely redacted from green screens. Some transitions between fighting scenes or car crashes are easily noticed by their flexibility a little too artificial. We are thinking in particular of the desert shooting, Call of Duty in the mind, even if to recallaim assisted FPS.
True Tom holds the dracée high to Daniel Craig for chase races (not to say that he far surpasses them) but the scenes of fights still remain a little too timorized and sometimes tarnished by untimely cuts in CGI. We are still far from the visceral brutality of the choreographies of Indonesian films like The Raid For example. The action is also artificially accelerated at times during a sequence of well-placed uppercuts for example, not always for the best.
Tom Tom and chicks
As for Ethan, he again finds himself surrounded by fatal women (to change). Ilsa (Rebecca Ferguson) and a new partner, Grace (Hayley Atwell), emeritus thief whose headline effects will be displayed throughout the film. That good old Tom knows how to do everything and he will also play the prestidigitators until the generic. A little easy gag and above all a "magic" pretext to cumulate the twists with these tricks.
Despite the improbable transitions with secret agents travelling in an airport like a mill, Dead Reckoning manages to make forget, if not forgive its inconsistencies. Tom can end up on the roof of an airport in barely fifteen seconds, Tom can sow a squad of agents in the middle of a terminal, so what? Poor Jasper Briggs (Shea Whigham, looks like Fabien Roussel) who will always have a train late to catch Ethan...
Finally the biggest flaw of Dead Reckoning is probably his inability to free himself from his legacy. One naturally thinks of the blow of the mask, revived since the very first episode, where however it was a monumental twist in 1996. Like a certain John Wick, Ethan is, however, close to freeing himself completely from the straitjacket of realism for a pure decomplexed spectacle.
Popcorn film led drum beating, the 163 minute session passed almost like a letter to the post, proof of some sense of staging and authenticity. It remains only to be hoped that the second part can bring a little more content to this story, all in all quite banal but devilishly rhythmic. Answer in 2024!
I don't know! Very cool criticism elsewhere 😉
Good criticism even if you fail to say how perfect, beautiful, incredible Tom is and is an example for all of us.
If only I had continued my efforts to integrate Hollywood Scientology... 🥹 One day MaG may interview Tom!😱
He can't get to Phil's ankle. What a disappointment that criticism does not even talk about it.
[...] partition of Lorne Balfe (self-citing his own work on Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, part 1) which enjoys a wide multichannel presence offers the LFE channel its best sitting [...]