Review of Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One (2023) by Dabucketoftruth — 15 Jul 2023

I was surprised how many issues I had with Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part 1 because I really remember liking Fallout quite a bit. It felt like one of the strongest in the series. The reviews for this installment are shockingly good, so I've felt compelled to write something here so that people are aware of some of its many issues.

The first is that the film felt a bit too campy even for them. Everything is a wink to the audience. There is so much corny humor that it undercuts the tension and seriousness of the stakes. I'm not even someone who subscribed to this idea that in the Marvel age of film-making there is too much joking around, but it seems we've finally hit that point. I found myself laughing at times I really shouldn't have either. Not to the extent I did in Jurassic World marveling at how bad some of the writing was, but definitely starting down that same road.

Next, there are multiple unnecessary dialogue lines in the film. I can't remember the specific line but it's from Vingh Rames and made me feel like "yes you don't have to spell it out we get it." The viewer is treated as an idiot. And while we're at it, there is just so much damned exposition in general. Every other scene of dialogue seems to be a context dump where they just stand around telling us the story. Felt like just chaining action sequences together with exposition. What happened to show don't tell?

Then we come to the emotional stakes. Why does Ethan care about Grace at all? He barely knows her. So then why do we care about her? She keeps screwing him over. There is a choice presented to Ethan at one point that he will have to decide who dies, her or his longtime associate Ilsa. Leaving the moral quandary itself aside, why would this be a difficult decision? Then when Grace impersonates Alanna with the mask her eyes are very brown when the the real Alanna clearly has big blue eyes. Is that for our benefit? Is this another example of the film treating the audience like morons? Because otherwise why would her bodyguard not immediately recognize that? It doesn't make sense.

Why are both the the Denlinger (the Director of National Intelligence), and Kittridge on the train? Are they together or separate? Having both of them there confuses the audience while they are trying to understand who is on what side. Is that purposeful then? Also how does this director guy know that only he has the knowledge of where the sub is? And why would he think that’s good leverage to not just be immediately murdered?

That takes us to our villains. Gabriel sucks as some blank canvas zealot for "The Entity." Going back to emotional stakes, they try to shoehorn some backstory flashback in of him murdering a woman Ethan cares for and then it being pinned on him. It feels really lame at this point in the series to just throw this in there and have it be something they expect the audience to just accept and also empathize with. The true villain being "The Entity" just falls flat too. They keep referring to it, and it sounds like they're talking about an alien. Does everything have to be about AI now? The fact that the enemy AI's goals aren't actually known the filmmakers probably thought would be even scarier, but I don't think it totally works when your villain is faceless and also has no clear motivation other than some omnipotent survival.

Obviously I have to give credit for some of the cool action sequences as usual. I wish the big jump hadn't been teased so relentlessly ahead of the film coming out, though, because it also blunts the impact of that sequence. Ethan just smashing through the side of the train car at the perfect moment in the perfect place was the icing on the cake of how not serious this film is. The overuse of CGI for certain action scenes also feels cheap when we have select filmmakers still holding the candle for practical effects. Though I do realize it might be tough to pull off blowing up a bridge and having a train fall off of it with models, real life locations, miniatures, etc.

Lastly a minor gripe I can probably let go of is why do the Russians in the intro have to speak English with an accent and not just have Russian with subtitles? It’s such a short scene too. Maybe this is standard Hollywood fare.

I'll end with saying that after seeing MI: Fallout and then Top Gun I had very high hopes for this film. Top Gun knows what it is and isn't, and it delivered on spectacle and excitement and was an achievement in in filmmaking even if not in writing. But Dead Reckoning Part 1 just feels cheap, cheesy, and ultimately disappointing. The filmmakers before the film started thanked us for coming to see this in the the theaters where it's meant to be seen. But Hollywood needs to deliver for the audience in a more consistent way because only so many of us are going to flush $25 of IMAX ticket down the toilet before we think twice about showing up next time.