I don’t know if anyone has measured whether Tom Cruise is faster than a blazing bullet. That person has legs and guts. His run into near-empty space defined and maintained his stardom, becoming his one-of-a-kind superpower. He scored even more miles with ‘Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1,’ his seventh in his 27-year-old series of repeated affirmations of cinematic truths. After all, few sights are more cinematic than a human overcoming danger and even death on screen. It is the ultimate wish fulfillment.
Much remains the same in this latest adventure, including the series’ reliable entertainment and cruise stamina. Once again he plays Ethan Hunt, leader of the Impossible Mission Force, a secretive American spy agency. With a rotating roster of beautiful and witty women (most recently Rebecca Ferguson and Vanessa Kirby) and loyal handymen (Simon Pegg and Ving Rhames), Ethan goes all out around the world while battling enemy agents. They run, fly, dive, and speed race. A rogue agent, various terrorists and an army of his minions. Along the way, he regularly delivers a number of stomach-churning surprises: jump out the window and climb the tallest building in the world.
The villain this time is a very oak artificial intelligence called Entity here. As is often the case with stories like this, the whole thing is complicated, with risks as catastrophic as the recent headlines tout. Or, as stated in an open letter signed last month by 350 AI stakeholders: “Reducing the risk of AI-induced extinction should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.” do you want? Analog Man, aka Mr. Hunt, receives his usual cryptic directives, but this time they’re recorded on cassette tape, an interesting touch for a film about the threat that god-like digital powers loom over the physical world. It is
That’s fine, and even if the most memorable villain turns out to be Harley Quinn-esque agent of chaos, Paris (Pom Klementieff), she’ll go after Ethan in a Hummer and get into her own series. It looks like it’s ready to spin off. In a chase scene seamlessly choreographed in Roman, she tries to eat him up. Stunt coordinator Wade Eastwood is also a racing car driver. It combines great handling skills with fear, laughter, thoughtful geometry and precise timing. At one point, Ethan finds himself handcuffed at the wheel by his new lover Grace (Hayley Atwell, another welcome addition), in what is effectively the equivalent of an action movie sex scene. , driving and drifting, flirting and burning rubber.
