Friday, July 14, 2023

Movie Review: Mission Impossible - Dead Reckoning: Part 1

Movie Number 27 of 2023

The Movie: Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning: Part One

The Cinema: Hoyts Victoria Gardens

Stars 3.5

Like Indiana Jones, you know what you're going to get with Mission Impossible films. Lots of action, great locations, unbelievable stunts and a too good to be true storyline. 

Like all the other Mission Impossible films, Dead Reckoning has all of this, and a bit more.

The film starts out ominously on a submarine. As we have seen from the last weeks, nothing good comes of submarines, and in this case, a computer system onboard is infected with an AI computer virus which sees the sub destroying itself and everybody on board. On board are these mythical keys, the only way to shut down this machine. 

Of course, these keys are somehow released back into the general public for the baddies to get their hands on. And it's up to Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his gang of Luther (Ving Rhames) and Benji (Simon Pegg) to sort all of this out. 

Bring on the big guns of the American Security world. Henry Czerny is back as Kittredge, effectively Ethan's boss. Cary Elwes is his wonderful foppish self as Delinger, the head of the CIA. 

The job of the guys is hampered by a wily pickpocket, Grace (Hayley Attwell), as is the involvement of Ethan's past flame, Ilsa (Rebecca Fergusson). And on the way, they pick up Ethan's old nemesis, Gabriel (Esai Morales) who wants this key more than anything. Oh, and Pom Klementieff, also known as Mantis from the Marvel universe, is great as Gabriel's psychotic, monosyllabic hired goon. 

I won't go into details of the full plot, it's too convoluted. 

But, you get a lot of bang for your buck here. 

The action scenes are incredible. The car chase through the streets of Rome, and what they do with the Orient Express is fantastic. Things blow up, there are great fight scenes and a few laughs along the way. 

The big thing with this film is it showing a nightmare scenario about what can happen with Artificial Intelligence - like an overblown episode of Black Mirror, this shows the potential horrors of what could happen if computers take over. 

I enjoyed this. It's fast paced, fun and the violence is that bang-bang-you're-dead type of gun and knife fights that don't muck you around too much.

And they've left the movie at the point where you half want to come back and see what happens in Part II. 

Some would say that they could have made these two movies as one. I don't agree - the action, which is unrelenting, would have suffered if it was any other way. 

Take your dad, your brother or your bloke. They'll love it. You'll probably love it too. 


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