One thing you’ve got to hand Tom Cruise and his regular director Christopher McQuarry is they never skimp.
The mission they always choose to accept is to give us something even bigger, more spectacular and, frankly, more downright dangerous than the last one. The audience is king, they say, and what the audience wants apparently is Olympic-sized thrills and spills.
And backing up the dazzling stunts, there’s often an equally dazzling cast, usually with very little to do.
Photo: Paramount Pictures
Look at the women in Dead Reckoning Part One. Vanessa Kirby from The Crown, Indira Varma from Game of Thrones, Pom Klementieff from Guardians of the Galaxy and Rebecca Ferguson, the modern-day Ingrid Bergman…
And above all sparky Hayley Atwell.
She’s best known, perhaps, as Peggy Carter, the love of Captain America’s life, but she’s been a favourite, if underused, presence in movies for years, and here finally she’s given her head as an international jewel thief called Grace.
Well, I say given her head… Everyone knows in most Tom Cruise movies – and all Mission Impossible ones – there’s only one person front and centre.
And apart from the very first of the series – directed by Brian Di Palma no less – where it looked as if Tom’s character Ethan Hunt was a mere sidekick to Jon Voight’s Jim Phelps – as if ! – it’s been the Ethan Hunt show ever since.
After Voight, Mission Impossible villains tended to be a little underwhelming. It’s rarely Tom versus a worthy adversary, because, frankly, who could be a worthy adversary to Tom Cruise?
Instead, Ethan Hunt is often pitted against intriguing minor villains - often glamorous women - temporarily employed by a shadowy Mastermind before they see the error of their ways.
That was certainly the case with Ilsa Faust – Rebecca Ferguson – who returns in Dead Reckoning as part of Ethan’s inner circle, along with Simon Pegg and Ving Rhames as computer nerd/cheerleaders.
After we blow up a Russian submarine as a pre-titles palate-cleanser, Ethan is summoned in a new mission involving a gold key. Actually, it’s two gold keys that together will open…
Well it’s not absolutely clear what it will open, but it’s clear who – or rather what – wants to get its grubby paws on it. It seems that the computers of the world have ganged together to form a super-sinister entity called The Entity.
I know what you’re thinking. At least I think I know what you’re thinking. You’re either thinking, not that old cliché – the sentient computer idea that fuelled The Terminator, The Matrix and dozens of lesser B-movies?
Or you’re not thinking anything much. It’s a plot that’s all, get on with the stunts. So, Tom gets on with the stunts.
But he’s got to reckon with an attractive wild-card. Grace keeps getting in Ethan’s way, pinching the magic keys from under his nose. Did I tell you she was a brilliant pickpocket, as well as an international jewel thief?
Actually, she has another, rather unlikely, skill - the ability to make Cruise look flat-footed.
Just as he’s got her - and at least one of the keys - in his grasp, suddenly she slips out of his hands and takes off to Venice, Rome, Abu Dhabi and wherever else the flimsy narrative takes us.
Meanwhile, the rest of the stellar cast are left in the shade somewhat.
Producer Cruise and director McQuarry are clearly too busy conjuring up spectacular stunts – including a one-armed car chase through the streets of Rome and an extraordinary bike jump that turns into a parachute drop in Norway – that they don’t have time to find anything much for anyone else to do.
This is particularly a waste of Kirby playing black marketeer the White Widow. Kirby arrives late, then gets nothing much to do, apart from being knocked out.
Actually, the same thing happens with Pom Klementieff as a baddy and Rebecca Ferguson as a goodie. Arrive, knocked out, repeat.
Meanwhile Cruise is up on trains fighting baddies, dropping from incredible heights, stunt driving and sneering at support actors as they deliver yet more exposition about the Entity.
Are you guys sure you want to stay with the Entity as the baddie? I mean, it’s almost impossible to punch an Entity on the jaw.
To be fair, Dead Reckoning Part One delivers what it says on the tin, and it certainly offers plenty of attractive things to look at. There’s Cruise, of course, there’s his wildly over-qualified support cast –Atwell does the best with the least-coherent material – there’s some gorgeous, exotic scenery and there are Cruise’s patented action scenes.
Not only does he do many of his own stunts, many of those shattered cars, trucks and trains are real too. A bare minimum of zeros and ones were hurt in the making of this film, I’m told.
Part Two will arrive in a year or so, and I’ll show up, I suppose. Though frankly, I’ll be more interested in Vanessa and Hayley than in Tom and the Entity.
