‘Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning’ Review: The Humanity Behind Ethan Hunt’s Mask Is Finally Exposed In An Exhilarating Part One

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers from “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One,” now playing in theaters. “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One’s” jaw-dropping train sequence in the film’s third act features Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt fighting Esai Morales’ Gabriel on the roof of a locomotive as it hurtles down a track at 60 mph. The set piece was originally supposed to be much longer. The scene climaxes with the train plunging off a bridge one carriage at a time during which Ethan and Grace (Hayley Atwell) cling on for dear life as they climb back up through the train.

SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers from “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One,” now playing in theaters. The “Mission: Impossible” movies have no shortage of death-defying stunts, but the Tom Cruise-starring action franchise is known for another iconic magic trick: its mask reveals. “Dead Reckoning Part One” features two mask reveals — in the first, Cruise’s Ethan Hunt uses a mask to infiltrate a meeting between CIA director Eugene Kittridge (Henry Czerny) and officials from various intelligence agencies about a rogue artificial intelligence system, known as the Entity. The other is a face swap between Hayley Atwell’s Grace, a pickpocket who becomes embroiled in IMF’s hunt for the Entity, and Vanessa Kirby’s black-market arms dealer Alanna Mitsopolis, aka the White Widow.

Todd Gilchrist editor Since “Mission: Impossible III” in 2006, Simon Pegg has been part of the core ensemble of the “Mission: Impossible” franchise, playing hacker and sometime field agent Benji Dunn opposite its stalwart star Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt. Pegg was never going to be the actor risking life and limb on screen — “it’s Benji’s job to be the one that actually says, ‘what the fuck are we doing here?’,” he observes. But over five installments of the indefatigable series, his character has shifted from questioning what Ethan is doing in the moment to believing absolutely in why he’s doing it, thanks in no small part to the writing and directing of Christopher McQuarrie. McQuarrie came onto “Ghost Protocol” as “a sort of master plumber to re-wriggle the pipes,” as Pegg characterizes it, and since became the series’ ongoing co-architect with Cruise. Their partnership reaches its peak, even if by all indications it’s far from over, with “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One,” half of an operatic culmination of narrative seeds planted since Cruise first played Hunt back in 1996. In a conversation with Variety, Pegg discusses what makes McQuarrie’s creativity so special, and his collaboration with Cruise et al so unique; he also talks about new details he discovered about Benji, explored the challenges of being self-referential in a franchise like this without undermining emotional stakes, and hinted at what is yet to come as he and the rest of the filmmaking team move on to “Dead Reckoning — Part Two.”

Zack Sharf Digital News Director SPOILER ALERT: This story discusses the ending of “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One,” currently playing in theaters. “Dead Reckoning,” the seventh installment of the “Mission: Impossible” franchise, is the latest Hollywood blockbuster to be split into two movies, but Tom Cruise and writer-director Christopher McQuarrie tried their hardest to give “Part One” a non-cliffhanger conclusion. The filmmaker recently told Total Film magazine that thinking about how to conclude the first of two movies kept Cruise up at night during the filming of “Part One.” “Where we ended the movie was always where we were going to end it,” McQuarrie said of the train action sequence. “How we ended the movie was a big, big mystery for us. It kept Tom awake at night throughout production. He would come in all the time and say, ‘This can’t be a cliffhanger, it’s got to be satisfying.’ The audience has to feel a sense of completion.”

Something that’s brought up in a new Happy Sad Confused podcast with “Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning—Part One” star Hayley Atwell. The host of the podcast, Josh Horowitz, essentially says ‘Mission Impossible’ movies should not work.

Paramount/Skydance’s Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One is off and running overseas with a $39.8M cume through Thursday in 48 international box office markets. This includes Wednesday openings in some markets and a strong paid preview program. With domestic’s Wednesday/Thursday plus previews, that brings the global total on the Tom Cruise-starrer to $$63.6M through yesterday.

Brent Lang Executive Editor “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One” netted $8.3 million at the box office on Thursday, pushing the action sequel’s North American gross to $23.8 million after two days of release. The film, which finds Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt hurtling off cliffs, fighting knife-wielding bad guys on trains and evading pursuers while driving a Fiat through the streets of Rome, was incredibly expensive to produce. Shot during the pandemic (with all the attendant shutdowns, delays and health protocols that were a staple of the COVID era), the budget on the film ballooned to $290 million. So “Mission: Impossible” will need to generate a lot of repeat business if it’s going to turn a profit, and it needs to boom at the global box office.

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One has been released.Directed by Christopher McQuarrie, the first part follows Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his band of operatives as they chase down a key to deactivate a sentient AI device known as the “Entity”.Alongside returning cast members Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson and Vanessa Kirby, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One adds Hayley Atwell, Esai Morales and Pom Klementieff to the franchise.Lorne Balfe returns to compose the score for both parts of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning. He previously scored the sixth installment, Mission: Impossible – Fallout, while his other credits include Marvel’s Black Widow, Amazon series The Wheel Of Time and this year’s Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.You can stream the full soundtrack below.The original Mission: Impossible theme was written and composed by Lalo Schifrin in 1967.

Wondering if you should choose to accept the latest “Mission: Impossible” entry? Maybe you’re sick of all the bombast at the movie theatre lately? Well, put it another way: Do you really want to disappoint Tom Cruise?

Vanessa Kirby handled a wardrobe malfunction like a pro at the Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One premiere in New York City on Monday, July 10. 

Can Tom Cruise save summer?

Your mission, should you choose to accept it…

Tom Cruise is just getting started. The 62 year old actor has been promoting her latest film, “Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning - Part One,” his seventh time playing the iconic role of Ethan Hunt. In a new interview, Cruise revealed he wants to keep playing the role for 20 more years.

Tom Cruise has no plans to stop taking on impossible missions. The actor is looking to Harrison Ford and his recent role in as his goal for the future.Cruise celebrated his 61st birthday on July 3 by attending a premiere of at Darling Harbour’s International Convention Center in Sydney, Australia.The action star spoke with The Sydney Morning Herald at the event and admitted he wanted to keep making installments in the long-running franchise until he's at least Ford's age.«Harrison Ford is a legend; I hope to be still going. I’ve got 20 years to catch up with him,» shared Cruise.

Tom Cruise has no intention of slowing down.

Tom Cruise is always taking stunts to the next level.

Tom Cruise has said that he plans to still be making Mission: Impossible films when he’s 80.The 61-year-old action star, who reprises his role as Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, said he has no plans to wrap up the franchise just yet.“Harrison Ford is a legend; I hope to be still going. I’ve got 20 years to catch up with him,” Cruise told The Sydney Morning Herald at the film’s Australian premiere, referring to the legendary actor’s role in Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny. “I hope to keep making ‘Mission: Impossible’ films until I’m his age.”The seventh instalment in the Mission franchise, out July 10, has received numerous positive reviews, with critics praising it as an “impeccably made” action film that “does not stop entertaining”.A less positive three-star from NME, however, said that “staggering stunts can’t make up for the nonsensical plot”.It went on: “The problems come when Dead Reckoning tries to be too clever.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” have a lot in common.Both are part of decades-old American franchises that have been led by the same stars from Day 1 — Tom Cruise and Harrison Ford. Both concern a mysterious object that’s been split in two and needs to be recovered before it falls into the wrong hands. And both feature an extended action chase aboard a moving train.Running time: 163 minutes.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic Sooner or later, Ethan Hunt will face a mission he really ought not to accept. But for the time being, he remains the one man on earth willing to attempt the impossible without questioning the motives of those who require his services. That’s the deal with America’s most dutiful boy scout, Tom Cruise, who’s carried the billion-dollar “Mission: Impossible” franchise across 27 years without losing steam. Compare that with Indiana Jones, who’s failed to connect with a younger generation, or the Fast and Furious movies, which aren’t running out of gas so much as guzzling the laughing sort. “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One” finds Cruise, now in his sixties, still running from one side of a very big, very wide screen to the other as if his life — and the lives of all 8 billion people on earth — depended on it. This is Hunt’s seventh blockbuster outing, with a last franchise-capper set to release next summer, and while it can’t eclipse what came before (“Fallout” was the series high), director Christopher McQuarrie delivers a formidable concept and several hall-of-fame set-pieces while somehow also managing to tie the storylines back into these movies’ core mythology.

EXCLUSIVE: That jibe Cate Blanchett made about awards shows being akin to a “horse race” “lost” her the Best Actress Oscar. So says Joey Berlin, CEO of the Critics Choice Awards.