Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, Features More Boring Exposition Than Thrilling Action
Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to follow Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One's plot without getting lost in its constant exposition. Although filled with thrilling action, there's an element of surprise from the stunts that are missing. I blame the internet for giving away the film's best stunt in the trailer. As a critic, I try to avoid watching trailers as much as possible. The reason is that they ruin the best parts of a movie. Despite my reluctance
to see previews, the movie's staple stunt inadvertently caught my eye when browsing the web. There's even a behind-the-scenes video of the scene currently available on YouTube. Why they spoil the scene before the film comes out baffles me. What is a series often loaded with surprises and thrills comes short in the plot department.
The story of Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning Part 1 is straightforward yet gets convoluted in its exposition. A radical antagonist is after the film's MacGuffin. In this case, the object of importance is two keys that connect into one, for they unlock the doors that achieve total technological dominance. The keys to this story lead to an A.I. entity acting of its own free will. Everything from someone's bank account to identity can be manipulated to the entity's desire; how the entity works is beyond my and even the movie's comprehension.
MI7 is loaded with exposition that doesn't help clarify an already convoluted story. It's like Inception, where so much information is being explained to the audience that it gets tiring after a short while. When the film isn't boring the crowd to death with its setup, the action thrills as it usually does, but without a dramatic backbone to base itself on film can feel rather stale.
There's a been there, done that feeling going on with Dead Reckoning Part One. The film plays like any other Mission: Impossible film, but the stakes feel limited here. It's not that they're lowered from the other films. It's that everything seems overly familiar. Once more, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is on the run, and once again, there's an inanimate object that everyone is chasing after. How the stakes are raised from here is not enough. There's a moment in the film where a key character is in danger, but the moment comes and goes like it's no big deal when it is, which is an enormous dramatic misstep that is common among action films.
When the story ended for Part One, I wasn't too excited to see Part Two of this branching, convoluted story. The plot of MI7 gets confusing and none the more interesting as the film moves along slowly. Watching a nearly three-hour movie of people talking about a MacGuffin isn't the most exciting cinema.
Why does every big-budget flick have to exceed well over two hours? What's so important in these films where scenes can't be cut to improve the narrative flow? How this film clocks in at its staggering two-hour and forty-three-minute running time isn't impressive. It drags many times, leaving me with moments where I'm scratching my head, wondering more about the next set piece than the actual story.
The film is without a threatening villain. The film's antagonist, Gabriel (Esai Morales), is out to get the MacGuffin key for his own purposes. It's Ethan Hunt's (Tom Cruise) mission to stop him. Although Gabriel is the antagonist, he's more a villain of the week stuck behind a two-part film that is yet to reveal a true threat to our heroes.
There's also the return of a familiar face, Eugene Kittridge, once more reprised by Henry Czerny. Kittridge was an intimidating threat in the original, whereas, in this film, he's more of a returning presence that offers itself as fan service. After having a grand antagonist like August Walker (Henry Cavill) from the last film, Mission: Impossible Fallout, Kittridge doesn't have that same sense of fear and intimidation as Walker or even Philip Seymour Hoffman's Owen Davian from the third film does.
Even if the story lacks its thrills, there are enough death-defying stunts performed by Mr. Cruise himself to warrant some jaw-dropping scenery. Mission: Impossible is often story first, action second, as it should be in almost every action film. Movies like John Wick can get away with being action first and story second as it makes it clear from the beginning that it's supposed to be a dumb action movie.
Mission: Impossible has always tried to be a smart action movie with varying results. MI7 is a film attempting to be a smart action flick, but it doesn't have the same cleverness as its previous entries. Nevertheless, the action in Dead Reckoning Part One is pretty impressive. There's a shootout in the Arabian Desert during a sandstorm that has some John Wick-like levels of choreography, a nailbiting collapsing train sequence, and of course, the film's most dangerous scene; Tom Cruise driving a motorcycle off a cliff and parachuting to safety. I wouldn't spoil the motorcycle parachute shot if the ads hadn't already done that. The movie is a blast when the action is on, but when the action stops, and the characters dive into the story, things aren't as interesting.
The existential threat of an A.I. is certainly relevant. But we don't see much of what this threat can do. The most the audience sees are some faces being changed on cameras, and that's about it. I get the A.I. can change identities on the spot and hack into whatever digital network that's available, but let's see some fallout from that. If this A.I. is such a threat, let's see how it is one rather than listening to people talk about it.
It's a shame so much emphasis is placed on an object rather than people, as there's a colorful cast to go around. The players from the previous films return including Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, and Vanessa Kirby, and a new, very welcome appearance from Marvel's Agent Carter herself, Hayley Atwell, offer more than pretty faces. Unfortunately, most of the cast's shining moments exist in the previous films and not this one. The one actor who glistens the brightest is Hayley Atwell, who's the main female action star of the film. But even with Ms. Atwell's talent, the movie is fixated on its MacGuffin.
Understandably Mission: Impossible is a franchise more invested in the action, but the story suffers because of how little emphasis there is on a real threat. If Tom Cruise and Christopher McQuarrie were wiser, they'd invest in a script with more stakes than exposition. Unlike the last Mission Impossible that got me hooked for future installments, this one could leave me less engrossed in where the story will go, as there's not enough dramatic baggage to warrant an interest in Part Two.
