Still better than Bond, but not Rogue Nation… yet.
This is complicated. Bear with me, it could take a while.
Let’s start with a fact: Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One is two hours and 43 minutes long. Two hours and 43 minutes. That’s 15 minutes shy of the theatrical runtime of Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.
When you’re lucky to get a cinema ticket for under 15 bucks nowadays, I do appreciate the filmmakers trying to give us value for money and it’s true that the Mission movies have increased in length as the series has gone on, following something of a Hollywood trend.
Beyond that fact, we need to get a little more subjective. What are the Mission Impossible movies best known for? Well, certainly the stunts, with Tom Cruise merrily risking his life in order to entertain us. Authenticity/lack of CGI maybe? But what genre are they? Action movies, surely. Those stunts are always in the service of action. And that’s a noble pursuit! The whole point of cinema is action… well, motion, but the two are indivisible. The first-ever film was The Horse in Motion. They are motion pictures. We call them ‘movies’. Movement is action. Ergo, cinema is action. That’s why the pinnacle of action movies for me, Mad Max: Fury Road, is, by definition, the best film ever made. It does what cinema was invented for better than any film before or since. And it’s two hours long.
In Fury Road, the action never stops for a moment, yet a complex world with multi-dimensional characters who we really grow to care for is built around the unrelenting motion. James Cameron showed us how to do this in 1984. There’s a ton of exposition in The Terminator along with some pretty cheesy dialogue, but you don’t notice it because it’s always delivered either during an action scene or while under constant threat. Two timelines and 30-odd years of world history are set up but you’re so focused on the deadly central pursuit that you never get a chance to be bored.
I didn’t learn the runtime of Mission: Impossible Dead Reckon… yeah, I’m just gonna call it M:I7, or we’ll be here all day. I didn’t know the runtime going in. My first moment of unease came before the credits and after two great action scenes. Suddenly, it just … stopped. A room full of well-known faces delivered the kind of expository dialogue that Mike Myers was lampooning back in the Nineties. Sure, I personally like the threat that was set up – it feels topical, all too credible, and frankly, bloody terrifying. But surely the team behind the last two fantastic Mission movies could have found a more dynamic way to establish it?
It’s okay though, because then we get some laughs and a (no spoilers) neat undercutting of the marketing before the title sequence and the adrenaline starts to pump again and I’m excited, and then… more talking, plus repetition of what’s already been established for the cheap seats.
Something similar happens with one of the big set pieces. If you’re aware of the marketing or have seen any interviews about the movie, then you’ll know about the big stunt that Cruise has been so excited to perform, and yes, it’s brilliant. But the build-up takes forever.
This is complicated.
It’s complicated trying to discuss it without spoilers. It’s complicated because I have to weigh my anticipation for this movie against reality and try not to let that colour this review.
I adore this film series. I adored the TV show, repeats of which I used to watch as often as possible while growing up. The original 1996 movie nailed the vibe and while the 2000 sequel is very much the angry drunken uncle of the franchise, it has been ascendant ever since.
Debuting in 2006, the same year we first met Daniel Craig’s Bond, M:I:3 initially went under my radar and I’m gutted I missed the chance to see it in cinemas. In Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s Owen Davian, we were given a villain for the ages. There has never been a Bond villain who came even close to being as terrifying as that character and sadly neither have any of the subsequent Mission baddies. Two more facts for you: One of the plot devices used to make Davian so frightening is, frankly, more than a little hackneyed, but M:I:3 undercut it. The same device is used in M:I7. It’s not undercut. And no offence to Esai Morales, he’s good, but he’s no Phillip Seymour Hoffman. Tragically, no one is anymore.
After the M:I:3 course correction, the series has gone from strength to strength. While it’s hugely commendable that Craig’s Bond run experimented and took, in some cases, huge risks, it often seemed to imitate rather than innovate. Casino Royale rebooted the character a year after Batman Begins laid the template for how to do so. In Skyfall Javier Bardem’s villain, Silva famously appeared to copy the Joker’s trick from The Dark Knight of being deliberately captured.
Meanwhile, the Mission Impossible series was maturing, importantly establishing a recurring team like the TV show, while letting Tom Cruise live his dream life as a stuntman movie star.
It’s significant that the ‘hero shot’ of the core team back together in M:I7 comes after an extended run of Cruise alone with Hayley Atwell, newly introduced for this film. She is great in this, so much so that I’ll have to finally get around to watching the Agent Carter series if it’s still on Disney+. But I came to see the team back together and I didn’t get enough of it.
This is complicated.
Since the hiccup of M:I-2, Rotten Tomatoes scores increase film on film, peaking with a 97% approval rating for the last entry before now, Mission: Impossible – Fallout, from 2018. Going subjective again, that contrasts with this ranking published the day I write by Total Film. For me, the peak of the series so far is the fifth entry, Rogue Nation. That was the first directed by Chris McQuarrie, who’s helmed them since – the series’ only returning director. The plot was set up in the preceding film with the arrival of the Syndicate, a call-back to the TV series. It opens with a jaw-dropping stunt, the whole of the second act is essentially one never-bettered extended action set-piece, and it’s often hilarious as well as emotional, character-driven, and deeply satisfying. If pushed, I’d – probably – rank it above any Bond or Bourne. It’s two hours and 11 minutes of perfection.
I’ve already mentioned the marketing for M:I7 and it’s worth contrasting with that for Rogue Nation. The ‘jaw-dropping stunt’ I mentioned above happens before the credits roll. It was almost a benign bait and switch, having been all anyone could talk about as the hype for the movie built. If you showed up to your screening a little late, you missed the whole thing. It’s remarkable that M:I7‘s hype machine has been almost promiscuously indiscreet with its centre-piece stunt. There are some other great set pieces including one that takes the best bit of The Lost World: Jurassic Park and improves on it exponentially. But Rogue Nation did all of this better, from the trailer and hype to the film itself.
There’s another recent article about the new movie in Total Film, about why M:I7 is divided into two parts. Talking about Fallout, McQuarrie says, “I knew I wanted to expand further in terms of the cast and in terms of the emotion of the story. I knew automatically that meant we were going to have a longer movie.”
Referring to M:I7, he goes on: “Instead of fighting the running time, I said let’s just cut the movie in half and give ourselves the breathing room to tell that story – not anticipating, then, that Part One would expand to the size that it did, the epic scale that it did.”
Honestly, right now, I’m not convinced the “emotion of the story” earns that running time. It’s the same length as the last Bond movie and – no spoilers – the emotion of that story certainly needed some breathing space. Does this? Does it really? Can anyone who spends more than five seconds contemplating what might draw that emotion not guess where this is going? And does it even earn the right to do that?
This is complicated.
But it’s not impossible. I need to see the movie again with my expectations realistically set. I don’t know yet whether that will be in a cinema or whether I’ll wait for a home viewing. Either way, I promise I’ll revisit this review when I do. I’ve repeatedly tried to distinguish between factual and subjective in this post. The fault here could easily lie with your reviewer rather than the film itself… there’s an article in that. So here’s one more fact, then I guess I’ll get a bit subjective again. This is Dead Reckoning Part One. None of us can really judge it until we have the whole film (probably as a five-hour + special edition on 4k), and if nothing else it does a good job of setting up expectations for the sequel, due in June next year. And while personally, I don’t love this one with the same ardour I reserve for Rogue Nation or the rest of the franchise, I’ll still argue it’s better than any of the Bond movies since 2006 with the exception of Casino Royale or Skyfall.
As usual, I haven’t read any reviews before writing this, but I’ve seen headlines and I know I’m swimming against the tide of opinion. Maybe I just expected too much. While there is a mission, I’ll always accept it. But – for now – this one, while not disavowed, is disappointing.
Image credit: Lucas Mordzin on Unsplash
