Review of Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One (2023) by Mace8704 — 15 Jul 2023

I genuinely don’t understand the early enthusiasm for this film, and I would largely consider myself a fan of the Mission Impossible series even the ones people find questionable like Mission Impossible 2. Moderate but not heavy specific spoilers ahead. The writing and narrative structure is really bizarre . The audience is given information well ahead of the long time protagonist, Ethan Hunt played by Tom Cruise. Therefore outside of the first 30 minutes of the film, there is no mystery for us as audience members. The overwhelming vast majority of the film Ethan is running around trying to find out information we as audience members are given in the first 15 minutes of the film. Then, there is new character of Grace who is present in the majority of the film. I was unable to connect with Grace, and was left scratching my head as to why the IMF was so loyal and willing to put their lives on the line for this thief who complicates their mission at every turn.

When Ethan Hunt is presented with a choice of saving Grace or a returning character, I wanted to shout at the screen for Hunt to save the returning character. If you sympathize and connect with Grace, you’ll probably enjoy this film much more than I did.

The primary antagonist lacks personality by design. Coming off the great performance of Henry Cavill as John Locke, I really struggled to get excited about defeating the faceless villain.

There’s also a new group of characters representing the American governments interest who constantly sabotage the IMF team, but Ethan Hunt is still dedicated to saving these characters. I left this film frustrated with Ethan Hunt as a character. If you’re just going for the action sequences and care very little for the narrative, characters, or structure, I didn’t find anything in this entry to be particularly memorable. This was by no means a terrible film, but it was dreadfully average and by no means a must see film even for fans of the Mission Impossible series. I’m left confused and feeling like the critics saw a different film than I did.