In Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One the risks mostly pay off

After the dizzying emotions of the spectacular Mission: Impossible – Fallout, how can you even imagine a sequel? Well if you are Tom Cruise, film star and producer, and with you there is also the director Christopher McQuarrie, you can safely try to raise the bar and set a stylistic breakthrough. But what if all of this has to be done during an epidemic, in various international locations, at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars? All the better.

This is the case with Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (in theaters July 12), an impressive attempt to once again excite viewers, who are far fewer today than five years ago. The gamble of Dead Reckoning, with its myriad locations, gargantuan budget, and death-defying stunts, is sizable. We’ll have to see how it pays for itself at the box office. In creative terms, however, the accounts, all things considered, add up.

At least, in the second half of the film. It takes a while to get the hang of it Dead Reckoningwhich swaps the smooth coating of Fallout with something more grainy, strange and comical. The daring shots evoke – certainly not by chance – the Mission: Impossible Of Brian DePalma of 1996. In Dead Reckoning there’s also a breathtaking train sequence, just like 27 years ago. McQuarrie seems to have stopped aping (and, at times, overcoming) Christopher Nolan and is returning to the roots of the franchise ME. It’s understandable, as we’re predictably nearing the end of the series.

Cruise shows no sign of slowing down, though his timing isn’t the best and he’s uncharacteristically struggling to get the gears turning. Dead Reckoning. But the stakes in the film are very high: a sentient artificial intelligence threatens the entire world, while human-led nations (and a couple of criminal enterprises) are engaged in a mad race against time to try to bring it back under their control. At the center of this story, for mainly personal reasons, is Ethan Hunt, super-spy or demigod, played by Cruise. The memory of a lost love resurfaces from the past, while a new almost romantic relationship is put in jeopardy. Over the macro and the micro (the world and the individual) looms a holistic threat that will define Ethan’s primary life mission.

This, perhaps, also applied to Falloutbut Dead Reckoning strives to underline its even greater greatness. The AI ​​is too magical and sci-fi for my liking: it certainly poses a creeping threat, but this enemy is too B-movie (think Transcendence) and too powerful (think any superhero movie) for the franchise’s relatively sophisticated chapters Mission: Impossible. It’s hard to take things seriously, then, because McQuarrie (who co-wrote the screenplay with Eric Jendresen) wants to explain everything to us, while trying to maintain a feeling of lightness. (There’s a chase through the streets of Rome involving a small yellow Fiat, for example.) The balance isn’t perfect, and even Cruise’s agility can’t correct it.

After about an hour, however, the film finds its balance, when Ethan and his group of helpers (including newcomer Hayley Atwell, in the guise of a skilled thief with an increasingly lengthy step) arrive in Venice. The “Depalmian” atmosphere of the film is appreciated in a dark and fascinating sequence, set in the maze of narrow streets (calli) of the most picturesque city in the world. Here our hero performs the mother of all stunts, already shown almost in its entirety in the promotional videos that have been circulating for months. It’s a shame that this jaw-dropping stunt – in which Tom Cruise jumps his motorcycle off a cliff and then saves himself by deploying his parachute like a worn-out base-jumper – was spoiled. As impressive as it remains technically, he’s been stripped of the element of surprise.

In any case, the following train scene, apart from the doubts about compliance with the laws of physics, remains a satisfying, relentless and convincing sequence. I guess it’s written into the rules of the game that a First Part really only has to pick up speed towards its conclusion, to propel us with momentum towards the finale, which hits theaters next year.

As always, Cruise is a marvel of intensity, even if in this case his humorous licenses appear a little forced compared to what was seen in the previous installments of the saga (or even in Top Gun: Maverick of last year). Maybe you simply feel the weight of a process besieged and constrained and sometimes invaded by a global pandemic. We were all a bit shaky and uncertain in those days, forgetting who we were as we attempted to live out a simulacrum of our former existence. This is why I believe that the second part, shot in 2022, the year of vaccines, will in all probability be more casual and less marked by worries.

I wish, in vain, that they would go back to filming properly. Dead Reckoning Part One is the first film by ME shot digitally and the difference is striking. His style isn’t the shiny, metallic one of so many streaming Netflix movies, which look like they were shot on a cell phone. But the flat look of Dead Reckoning it only adds to the feeling that the film misses the mark by a measure or two, as it strenuously tries to package its product conditioned by both internal and external constraints not always within its control.

The fact that McQuarrie and Cruise ultimately get this heavy aircraft flying and flying to a satisfying climax is testament to the commitment and dedication with which they tackle these projects. «What do you think of this show?», asks the film to its audience, already breathless, sweaty and agitated, just taking a short break for refueling before taking off and darting back to other shores and other tightrope walks.