The action in this 'Mission' delivers

 

  I enjoyed Mission: Impossible -- Dead Reckoning (2023) but grumbled about the movie's two-hour and 41-minute length. And that was only Part I. 

 The second chapter, Mission: Impossible -- The Final Reckoning, takes two hours and 51 minutes to conclude an epic battle between the IM force and The Entity, a hunk of super-AI intelligence that lingers from Part I and threatens to wipe out all of humanity. 

   Length and story aside, it’s unlikely that the audiences that flock to Final Reckoning will be discussing the dangers artificial intelligence poses to human life as they leave the theater.

   What will they be talking about? If you said “stunts,” you’re right on target.

    More on that in a moment.

   Tom Cruise and director Christopher McQuarrie begin Final Reckoning in a wobbly fashion, using flashbacks from previous movies as refreshers but also generating a bit of confusion.

   Once the movie settles in, the story becomes a springboard for a couple of major set pieces — one involving a sunken Russian submarine, the other centering on an airborne battle between Cruise’s Ethan Hunt and Gabriel (Esai Morales), the movie’s primary villain. 

   Gabriel wants to rule humanity by controlling The Entity; Hunt wants to save humanity by destroying The Entity. The aerial action takes off with each character flying a biplane in a fight that's augmented by an antagonistic history between Gabriel and Hunt to which the screenplay alludes.

   Both nerve-wracking sequences are executed with  exceptional skill and without benefit of CGI. As Hunt plies the freezing depths of the Bering Sea to find a device needed to fulfill his mission, the sub threatens to roll off a steep ocean precipice into even deeper waters. Unmoored torpedos slam against the sub’s interior and threaten to clobber Hunt as he conducts his search.

   The aerial antics find Hunt hanging from the struts of his plane and executing high-flying moves that make you wonder how they were done.

    Forget dialogue, Dead Reckoning is at its best when it allows action to speak louder than words. And keep this in mind: Each of these set pieces functions as a mini-movie: goals are set, obstacles arise, and a resolutions are reached.

    Much of the IM cast returns with notable contributions from Simon Pegg as Benji Dunn, technician supreme. Hayley Atwell portrays Grace, a thief who has become part of Ethan’s crew and who flirts with the role of love interest. Ving Rhames returns as Luther Stickell, a character who serves as the voice of the franchise, offering an ode to Hunt and those heroes who, as he puts it, “live in the shadows.”

   Angela Bassett adds gravitas to the far-fetched plot machinations. As the president of the US, she must decide whether to trust the roguish Hunt or listen to the generals who want her to unleash nuclear Armageddon, part of the screenplay's growing accretion of risk. 

     The movie’s mildly ambiguous ending could signal the conclusion of a series that’s in its 30th year. Or it could suggest that there’s more to come — with or without Cruise in the lead. Cruise’s once boyish face shows the beginnings of jowls. At age 62, he may have had enough. 

    Whatever decision Cruise makes, it’s a good bet that audiences will follow. Sure, much of Final Reckoning proves uneven, but with this level of excitement, complaints seem beside the point.

A caper built around Boston bumblers

If you were picking a movie based on its cast, The Instigators would be a good bet. The movie stars Matt Damon and Casey Affleck and utilizes the talents of Michael Stuhlbarg, Alfred Molina, and Ron Perlman in supporting roles. But the cast — no matter how strong — can’t shake the limits of dreary, uninspired material. Director Doug Liman ( Edge of Tomorrow, Mr. and Mrs. Smith,  The Bourne Identity, and most recently, a maligned remake of the movie Road House) brings us to Boston where Damon and Affleck play bumblers lured into stealing big bucks from the city's corrupt mayor (Perlman).  Another member of the larcenous band (Jack Harlow) is too quick to resort to violence. Not surprisingly, the heist goes wrong, taking the story on a stale and disappointing journey. The movie strains to introduce a comic element when Damon's Rory is joined by his therapist (Hong Chau) as the thieves take flight. The joke: Chau's character takes an inappropriately therapeutic approach to Rory's larceny. The big theft has been orchestrated by Stuhlbarg's conniving character with an assist from Molina's Richie, a Boston baker. Ving Rhames signs on as a tough Boston cop engaged by the mayor to retrieve a valuable piece of property taken during the heist. Damon and Affleck don't offer much by way of scintillating banter, and car chases through the streets of Boston add little excitement. The movie, releasing on AppleTV+,  does its best to load up on local Boston color, but the results are drab.

Tom Cruise on another action-packed mission

 

 Let me get this off my chest about Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One. Any movie that's two hours and 43 minutes long and calls itself "Part One" wrinkles my brow. If two hours and 43 minutes isn't enough to tell a Mission: Impossible story, how did Citizen Kane manage to be so scintillating, colorful, and richly alive in a mere one hour and 59 minutes?

 OK, now back to reality.

 Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part I boasts some of the best action footage you'll see this year. Moreover, a strong cast adds enough nuance to keep the story from seeming like an excuse to vault from one dizzying set piece to the next.

 This edition takes a topical turn with writers Erik Jendresen and Christopher McQuarrie, who also directs, injecting artificial intelligence into the plot. 

 A brief explanation: An artificial intelligence called The Entity has the potential to control everything. Because AI knows no allegiances, many people want to control The Entity, either living in its good graces or harnessing it for evil.

  Not Ethan Hunt, the character played by Tom Cruise. Hunt, the IM agent who has been defying death since Cruise brought him to life in 1996 aims to kill The Entity. He has no interest in using it, which means he's the defender of humanity's right to be ... well ... human, a value that fits nicely with the series’ preference for stunts over CGI-created effects.

   Cruise, who just turned 61, looks a bit longer in the tooth than he did when Hunt undertook his first mission. Still, longer in the tooth for Cruise, who does his own stunts, isn't quite the same as longer in the tooth for anyone else and he deepens Hunt by adding layers of doubt and regret.

    Two major additions add spark. Hayley Atwell signs on as Grace, a pickpocket who'll end up working with Ethan. Esai Morales portrays Gabriel, a villain who makes no bones about his evil designs on The Entity and who is connected to Hunt's past in ways that presumably will be explored in the next movie.

    A variety of actors make return visits, notably Rebecca Ferguson as Isla Faust, a sometime antagonist and sometime ally of Hunt whose smile suggests that she's crushing on him. Ving Rhames and Simon Pegg reprise their roles as part of the IM crew, and Henry Czerny shows up as a former IM boss who still keeps a hand in intelligence.

   Enough about the cast, which is large and which, over time, has developed characters that rival the Marvel Universe for interconnection and overlap. 

   In these moves, action goes a long way toward defining character, so it's worth mentioning of a few highlights. 

   Dead Reckoning opens with a tense prologue on a Russian submarine and then serves up a battle in the Arabian Desert, a suspenseful scene in Abu Dhabi International Airport, a clever Roman car chase in which Cruise and Atwell are handcuffed to each other in a Fiat, and  a white-knuckled motorcycle ride that finds Hunt driving over a cliff.

   A  literal cliffhanger of a finale puts us aboard a speeding train headed for a demolished bridge while leaning into vertiginous thrills.

   Much of what happens in the movie is motivated by the need to find two halves of a key that can unlock mysteries that the movie pretty much keeps to itself. Using a key as a MacGuffin seems less imaginative than we expect from Mission: Impossible movies, almost Indiana Jones-ish. 

   But everyone wants the key and we'll have to wait until next year to learn what it will reveal about The Entity.

   Now, it's time to offer an addendum to my opening paragraph.

   Look, I prefer forms of storytelling that are more economical and richer; I wouldn't want to call this IM screenplay a model of efficiency. 

  At the same time, I wasn't bored. Going in, I knew the movie was two hours and 43 minutes long, so I occasionally checked my watch to see how McQuarrie was handling all the globe-hopping as he barreled toward an ending.

   Reservations about length aside, I'll look forward to Part Two. My anticipation has less to do with learning the secrets of The Entity than with knowing that Cruise and his team can be relied on to deliver the action-packed goods -- with enough style and sophistication to keep the series humming at high levels.

 

'Mission: Impossible' scores again

A worthy addition to a reliably entertaining franchise.

The well-orchestrated action is plentiful, and an intense Tom Cruise approaches his role with the usual grim determination.

What else could we be talking about but a Mission: Impossible movie, this one entitled Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation?

I shouldn't be flip, though.

Writer/director Christopher McQuarrie (Jack Reacher and The Way of the Gun) drives the movie with sufficient skill to ensure that the Mission: Impossible series remains one of the more reliably entertaining franchises of recent years.

A breathless opening finds Cruise's Ethan Hunt hanging onto a speeding jet, but before you even dip into your popcorn, the movie has jumped into a plot that begins with the IM force being dissolved by Washington bureaucrats.

Suddenly a rogue agent, Hunt is left to battle with a world-threatening outfit called "The Syndicate," and we're left to wonder whether the lithe and lethal woman in this scenario (Rebecca Ferguson) can be trusted.

A spy who early on saves Hunt from Syndicate bad guys, Ferguson's Ilsa Faust may not be entirely on the righteous side of the fence.

With any Mission Impossible movie, character and plot deficiencies are easily overcome by great set pieces.

Rogue Nation never quite matches the vertiginous thrill of the signature scene from 2011's Ghost Protocol, the one that found Hunt hanging off a Dubai skyscraper.

Still, McQuarrie is no slouch when it comes to action.

A prolonged sequence at a Vienna opera house proves classy and exciting, action coupled with gorgeous music from Puccini's Turandot. An underwater scene generates plenty of tension, and Hunt's obligatory motorcycle chase -- this one across a winding mountain road -- is executed with quick-cut precision.

The usual suspects arrive, adding color and linking Rogue Nation to the series' past:

Simon Pegg reprises his role as Benji Dunn, the movie's technical wizard, as well as a comic foil for Hunt.Ving Rhames returns as an ace tracker.

Jeremy Renner shows up again; he's the IMF guy who -- in the movie's first half -- is stuck in Washington trying to defend his colleagues before a very official looking committee.

Alec Baldwin joins the fray as a CIA chief who wants to shut down the IMF. He regards Hunt as a loose cannon who needs to be eliminated.

Ferguson, a Swedish actress, lands a breakout role. She brings beauty and subtle helpings of gray matter to her character, giving the movie an aura of intelligence, it might otherwise lack.

At 53, Cruise continues to bring coiled energy and a sense of danger to a role that seems tailor made for him.

A gem? Hardly. The plot can feel preposterous enough to be laughable, and the movie doesn't always bristle with wit. At times, Rogue Nation feels like a Bond movie that's taking itself way too seriously.

Still, abundant style and excitement keep this one solidly in the plus column. Not bad for a series that's now in its 19th year.