Butler's Cinema Scene

Hayley Atwell, Tom Cruise

“MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – DEAD RECKONING PART I” My rating: B (In theaters)

163 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

The latest “Mission: Impossible” is exactly what fans expect. Only bigger.

Great action sequences, a bit of suspense, gorgeous location photography, (mostly) pretty people to look at.

Yeah, there’s nothing here even remotely approaching valid human drama, but it’s summer, the season of amusement parks.  And “M:I – Dead Reckoning Part I” is the biggest roller coaster around.

The film (it’s been written by Bruce Geller, Erick Jendresen and Christopher McQuarrie and directed by McQuarrie) opens with a nail-biting sequence beneath the polar ice cap.  Sailors on a Russian submarine are testing a new artificial intelligence program providing sophisticated masking technology that renders the boat invisible to prying eyes.

But something goes terribly wrong.

Eavesdropping on a meeting of U.S. national security experts, we get the Cliff’s Notes explanation:

The Russkies’ A.I. has achieved sentience — it’s now referred to as “The Entity” — and has infected every digital corner of our world: computers, cell phones, satellites. There’s no way to hide from this new uncontrollable version of Big Brother, who knows everything humans are up to.

There’s a nice visual joke here…a vast office (think the warehouse at the end of “Raiders of the Lost Ark”) is filled with thousands of government clerks using last-century typewriters to copy sensitive digital files onto paper lest The Entity decide to clean house.

Anyway, somehow our spy bosses learn that a special key — a literal, physical key — can be used to unlock and access The Entity.  The key comes in two parts that fit together to form a sort of three-dimensional, glowing cross (religious imagery, anyone?).

Except that the two pieces have been separated.  They could be anywhere on Earth.

So who do you call with an impossible task?

Enter Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt, who with his M:I colleagues (Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames) has the will and wherewithal to track down the metallic MacGuffin and prevent the end of the world.

“Dead Reckoning” reunites Hunt with both his on-again-off-again flame Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson), who comes out of hiding to pitch in, and the Black Widow (Vanessa Kirby), an amoral  dealer in secret technology.

And he has a new nemesis in Gabriel (Esai Morales), a psycho killer who serves as The Entity’s arms and legs. Apparently many moons ago, before Ethan joined the M:I, Gabriel brutally murdered the woman our hero loved. (We see all this in rapid-cut flashbacks.)

Oh, yeah, Gabriel has a sword-waving female sidekick (Pom Klementieff) so implacably effective that she could  be cousin to Schwarzenegger’s Terminator.

Pretty much stealing the film, though, is Hayley Atwell as Grace, an in-it-for-herself thief, pickpocket and con artist who has been hired by a mysterious figure to transport one of the key halves to a buyer.  Grace is the Han Solo of the piece, a self-serving sort whose greed is coerced by Ethan into something vaguely resembling patriotic virtue.

Once you get past all the explanatory dialogue, “Dead Reckoning” gets down to business, delivering an eye-popping set piece every 20 minutes or so.

A nuclear bomb threat at a crowded international airport. A destructive car chase through Rome (around the Coliseum, no less). Vicious brawls on the bridges and in the alleys of Venice.

And finally a runaway train ride through the Italian alps and a massive wreck over a bottomless gorge that approaches the destructive genius of Buster Keaton’s “The General.” 

This climactic sequence also provides Cruise with his wildest-haired stunt yet — riding a motorcycle off a mountain top and dropping like a rock into an alpine valley, only to be jerked up short by the parachute in his backpack (never go biking without one).

Cruise is famous for doing his own stunts, and the film is forever making it clear that, yes, this is a movie star risking his neck for our pleasure.

Lest all this come off as a case of look-at-me egoism, Cruise injects self-deprecating humor of a sort not seen before in the series.  Quite frequently Ethan looks befuddled, perplexed and incredulous…all of which makes our hero more vulnerable than the ubermench he’s portrayed in the past. 

Once unflappable, Ethan now flaps. A little, anyway.

At two-and-a-half-hours-plus “Dead Reckoning” almost wears out its welcome…I could have done with a bit less declamation between the exciting parts.

The idea that you can only beat an all-knowing artificial intelligence by falling back on the analog technology of yesteryear is introduced but never explored.  (Actually, that might make for a great episode of “Black Mirror.”)

And of course the film ends with The Entity still in control of the digital world…this is only Part I, you know.

But, hey, it’s advertised as a thrill ride and it delivers.

| Robert W. Butler

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