MI : Dead reckoning – Part 1 – movie review

I am a huge fan of Mission Impossible (MI) series and have seen all the movies in that franchise till date. It is a favorite for another reason that, somehow or other I would end up watching this series on theaters along with friends. The atmosphere, especially the pulsating theme music, stays with you long after the end credits roll and lingers for a while. Tom Cruise never fails to entertain with his unbelievable stunts and adrenaline pumping action sequences. You remove Cruise and his stunts, MI series would be more of Missing Information, in the form of a story line, rather than Mission Impossible!! All you would remember after watching the movie would be how Tom Cruise ran across Burj Kalifa tower or raced a sandstorm or climbed a running plane or was hanging bare hands on a cliff or hanging upside down all the way down a secret vault, but rarely the reason why he would be doing all those stunts. In some case it might be to chase a secret drug or some arm shipment or to retrieve some classified information or at times even to stop a nuke detonation. The success of the franchise is in ensuring that none of these questions crop up in the audience while watching the movie, for they would have been glued to those physics and gravity defying action sequences, majority of which would have been performed live by Tom Cruise. It is like paying for an amusement ride and watching Tom Cruise enjoy those rides.

I happened to watch this one on OTT, probably a main reason why I was able to follow the story line a bit more closely than previous ones. Not sure if it was due to change in medium, this time I felt the story had a bit more bite to it. Considering that the plot was a bit more relevant to the current world situation and in lead up to future as well, with Artificial intelligence being seen with suspicion as to how far it will go in stretching its capabilities. The movie begins with a key being used to lock/unlock some system that is called/addressed as “entity”, which is installed inside a Russian submarine. Suddenly they spot an unidentified sub on their sonar, and it tries to attack the Russian submarine. They take evasive measure and offensive measures by launching a torpedo on the enemy ship. Suddenly the sub vanishes from screen and while they heave a sigh of relief, the torpedoes that they launched come back and destroy the very sub from which it was launched. So begins the movie, with Tom and his team, couple of other groups from world governments, villain gang all chase each other to grab hold of the key. What those key opens, how the holder of the key will control the entity, are all expected to be explained in the second part. Like every other movie in the franchise, it is Tom’s show all the way, with him literally running the show. Like in every movie, he runs and runs and runs across streets, all over the world, other than doing fantastic stunts on bikes, which all are salient features to watch out on every MI movie. There is a new girl, a thief, who steals the key and ends up joining the MI task team in the end, a replacement for the lady who was a recurring character on previous movies but dies in this series. As usual, the technical wizardry that they show on screen is unbelievable at that instance only for the world to make it common place in couple of years.

The downer for me in this movie was the much-touted stunt of Tom Cruise jumping off a cliff. There were lot of videos and promotions over this shot on You Tube but in movie, it comes like a chopped scene, where one moment he jumps and gets into a parachute and next scene he crashes into a moving train. Even though it was breathtaking and no doubt on the efforts that went into it, as a scene it felt incomplete when compared to his other stunts. Overall, it felt like the usual MI movie and very eagerly looking forward to the next part of this series, which I believe could be the final one of this franchise with Tom at least, hopefully 😊 that guy never ages. For his age, he runs like anything and does physically impossible stunts even for those who are decades younger than him.