Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1 2023
A-
I haven't watched all of Tom Cruise's Mission:Impossible movies, just 4 and 6, and then a friend told me I should watch 1 before seeing this movie. They are impressive movies, with intrigue, big stunts, chases, etc. Classic action movie stuff and not entirely different from James Bond or Jason Bourne movies. While the internet stuff in the first movie was pretty primitive, now everything is based on technology and the internet, plus lately, artificial intelligence, and Mission:Impossible has done a good job of keeping up. Not in a gimmicky way either like James Bond playing a video game or Texas Hold 'em. Meanwhile there are exotic locales, this time Venice and the Alps, and some amazing stunts. It certainly keeps your attention, even for the very long running time. However, I feel like they relied too much on common elements of all of these movies and took too many shortcuts with implausible plot devices, which I will include in the spoilers. Still a fun movie, but not as sharply written as I would like. Plus of course the whole thing is unresolved, so I am only judging half of a movie at this point. For now I will give it an A-.
spoilers
There are things I'm not crazy about. They make a valid point that people close to Ethan end up getting killed, but why don't the bad guys just kill Ethan? Why shoot the girlfriends? People in the movie can be awesome fighters or seemingly easily defeated as needed by the plot, particularly some of the fairly scrawny women. In one fight a woman is fighting with a sword against a guy with a knife and it just seems like she should easily be able to take that guy out. If they really do have an all-knowing enemy why does it seem late to the party by destroying the mask maker, but only after they already made one mask? It seems like it could know pretty easily where they are even if they are using analog equipment because it can listen to analog signals. It gets hard to write, so some shortcuts had to be taken.
I thought the motorcycle jump was a little too long and did not buy for one minute that he could time it perfectly to get onto that train. Also with the train I thought they probably had one car drop than they really needed, though it is a great sequence. Some of the chases were long and kind of unrealistic, like the whole thing with the possessed yellow car. I feel like they are just giving out candy rather than thinking it through and earning it. And though I liked seeing Cary Elwes show up, who gives up their entire species so that computers can rule the planet? My other problem with technology being the bad guy is that if somebody invented the evil technology in the first place, it won't take long before somebody else does the same thing. That is the nature of technology.
Written: 19 Jul 2023