REVIEW: Mission Impossible: Reckoning Part 1 is spectacular!

It's incredible to think that the franchise Missão Impossível is already approaching 70 years old, considering that almost 30 of those are equivalent to the time in which Tom Cruise was at the helm of the reboot cinematography of the TV series. Since 1996, he's brought us seven thrilling films, including the first part of what, as far as we know, will be the end of Cruise's participation in the franchise, Mission Impossible: Reckoning Part 1, with premiere scheduled for the next 13th in cinemas across the country.

History of the Last Mission

On your 61st birthday – by the way, congratulations, Tom, on your July 3rd birthday! – Tom Cruise has done just about everything on the big screen, and especially in the movie series Missão Impossível, the actor makes a point of saying that he participates in almost all the stunts filmed. In Mission Impossible: Reckoning Part 1, Cruise, in the role of super agent Ethan Hunt, not only challenges his limits, but also plays with our expectations about the series, presenting a more insecure and even flustered side to Hunt, until then unheard of.

With a hint of Steve McQueen in the classic escaping from hell, another star who always put himself in danger during filming, the veteran action movie actor spares no effort in stunts with a motorcycle in the Austrian Alps, nor in the hallucinatory scenes where the beating rolls loose in tight spaces, moments in which Cruise seems defy the definition of what we imagine for a man his age. And, of course, he runs around a lot throughout the movie, after all, the guy is Tom Cruise.

A heavy cast

But none of it would be what it is without a cast to accompany our favorite sexagenarian in cinema, and in that regard, Mission Impossible: Reckoning delivery and more. Along with Hunt are the characters Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames, who has appeared with Cruise in all the films in the series so far) and Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg, from the wonderful Everybody almost dead) returning to provide valuable support; they team up again with the dangerous agent Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson, previously seen in Mission Impossible: Fallout Effect e Mission Impossible: Ghost Nation), now renegade and hunted around the world.

Joining the adventure is Grace (Hayley Atwell, Agent Carter of the MCU), a thief who finds herself in the middle of a world-class conspiracy when she bumps into Hunt in Dubai, as she has obtained part of the “MacGuffin” (a term commonly used to describe the item over which everyone is in dispute) from the film, a key whose purpose no one really knows, at least at the beginning, but which everyone agrees is something of extreme value to the world power that obtains it. From there, she will be carried away by the contagious wave of energy that is Tom Cruise on a tour around the planet, all the while being pursued by the enemy.

This is not only from rival countries seeking to take control of the artifact, but also Gabriel (Esai Morales, from the series Ozark), the flesh-and-blood crony of the artificial intelligence known by the codename "Entity", a ghost from Agent Hunt's past long before he joined the IMF, (the acronym of the Impossible Mission Force, or Impossible Mission Force, translated into Portuguese) and that the hero believed to be dead.

The enemy is now another

That's exactly what you read: an AI is among the factions in the film's fight, since the plot of the new Mission Impossible revolves around it, since it has the capacity to dominate the entire technological network of the planet, and this machine is not for prank. With the key, everyone believes they will be able to end it, or worse, control it, despite having already shown itself to be resistant to this, and very threatening. It is capable of causing a lot of damage, as we see in the opening minutes of the film, in which a Russian submarine ends up sunk in the Bering Sea, off the coast of Alaska, thanks to the tricks of this ruthless artificial and conscious system. 

As repeatedly stated during the 2 hours and 43 minutes of Reckoning Part 1, she uses her capabilities to manipulate everyone, and there is no way to act without everything having already been coldly calculated. The race against time until both parts of the key are together takes the characters to Italy, where an auction – and what else? – is about to happen, set in motion by the elusive White Widow, Vanessa Kirby’s character (from The Crown), which, of course, ends up giving the film a lot of its fantastic action scenes.  

Danger everywhere

How then to combat an enemy like that, which can be everywhere at all times, since human life today is intrinsically connected 24 hours a day in some way to the Internet and the means of communication? In the film, those responsible for the forces involved in the clash resort to analog technology, as we see with the United States and Ethan's former contacts, with them racing against the clock to write all there is intelligence for the good old role, not to mention with long-outdated Cold War-era satellites in order to leave nothing for "Entity" to absorb in its intrusions into the security systems of the most armed nation on Earth.

This is a factor in the story that yields comic moments to the seventh Mission Impossible, because of so much dependence on its technological gadgets, even Hunt is lost having to depend on a mere radio to communicate with his friends, which Christopher's script McQuarrie, also the film's director, makes good use of it to show that even a super agent is capable of fumbling in the field. We were already quite used to seeing the character appear to be fully prepared for any situation; now to see him tripping over himself, even with his usual inexhaustible source of breath, is quite refreshing.

Conclusion

as expected, Mission Impossible: Reckoning Part 1 it's a tremendous action movie that leaves little time for the audience to even notice the almost three hours duration of the adventure. The chase scenes are as tradition of the series spectacular, many of which serve in a way as homage to the first film, like the entire sequence in which Ethan infiltrates a train, battling his rival on top of it, as he did with Phelps (character by John Voight) in 1996, which eventually lands him in a situation that mirrors Nathan Drake's shenanigans in the game's opening. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. 

Since Mission Impossible: Reckoning Part 1 it is only the first of a couple of films, it is not surprising that the story does not conclude now, but the hook that it leaves open for the conclusion promises a lot, leaving crumbs that have the potential to serve as a trail for a chapter emotional ending, which this excellent film series deserves to receive and which we will certainly watch in 2024. 

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Source: IMDB

Text proofread by: Pedro Bomfim (05/07/23)