Tropic Sprockets / Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning

By Ian Brockway

Ethan Hunt is back attempting to keep the world in balance. It’s  Christopher McQuarrie’s latest chapter of the Mission: Impossible franchise, titled “Dead Reckoning.” Although in many ways the circumstances are reminiscent of the previous films, this current chapter has sensational action sequences bordering on the madcap.

Here again Is Agent Hunt (Tom Cruise) asked on a mission, should he choose to accept it, to shadow agent Illsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) who has a Christian-like key that can somehow control the world.

Hunt puts his generic face forward, sometimes looking soporific or blank, sometimes smirking but he gets the job done.

Various executive villains impede his progress including Gabriel (Esai Morales), who bears a striking resemblance to “The Most Interesting Man in the World” from the Dos Equis commercials. The influence of commercials and magazines here is apparently no accident. Ethan Hunt himself is a GQ model man of action punching and sprinting to acquire the Da Vinci Code golden key.

Here Tom Cruise is the generic Everyman as secret agent. All of the machinations of intrigue are rote, with all of the computer key strokes and looks askance. In an eerie sense, this is a film of surfaces of runway model espionage. Tom Cruise is poker faced, and the female agents are choreographed to throttle, choke and incapacitate. If this is James Bond by Vanity Fair, it still manages to entertain.

The action sequences Involving cars that spin like tops and trains that become suspended in midair have the surreal qualities of a dream while the long perspective shots recall the visual effects of Hitchcock staple Albert Whitlock.

While many of the segments reference car chase films from “The Bourne Identity” to “Mad Max: Fury Road,” the episodes even outdo these films. Buildings shake and cars become like rubber. All with an odd neutrality in Tom Cruise’s expression.

These moments are arresting to a degree as they seem to be a hallmark of our current moment in civilization. The earth is angry. Heavy vehicles could very well slip into the abyss with mountain ranges transforming into a liquid mass.

When Ethan Hunt suddenly hovers in the air struggling with a falling train, his panic is one of a man overwhelmed by our unpredictable life. The direction of up is down. Fire blossoms as if by sorcery from a train car ceiling and metal becomes plastic.

While the acting is monotone, the conflict is a reflection of our current age: artificial intelligence, climate change, Covid, shootings and the megalomania of World Domination. All of these things are in a day’s work and who better to have by our side than Ethan Hunt with his ever present stony expression of self-satisfaction and unwavering confidence.

Write Ian at [email protected]

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