My SPOILER-FREE Review of The Kick-Ass 'Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning'
As many of you know, the long delayed sequel to one of the greatest action movies of all time is coming out in a couple of days. I was fortunate enough to catch it on Saturday ahead of interviews with Simon Pegg and Pom Klementieff and I can tell you definitively that it fucking rocks. And I am not just saying that because I am a MASSIVE homer for this franchise...
Anyway, here is a SPOILER FREE review on what to expect.
There is one thing that everyone will go into the movie looking for and that is STUNTS. They've become a massive part of the McQuarrie run of the franchise and really hit a new level with the HALO jump in Fallout. I can happily report that they do, in fact, deliver in this one. So much so that the very widely publicized motorcycle cliff jump is maybe the third most thrilling sequence in the movie.
The new additions to the cast are great. Haley Atwell is a perfect fit for the femme fatal thief, Esai Morales is just as intimidating as he is in Ozark and Pom Klementieff is an awesome goon. All of the returning folks hit their marks just like you'd expect with Luther and Benji having a particular step up in depth.
One of the coolest things about this movie is the return to the roots of the franchise. It's got a stronger espionage plot than Fallout and leans way heavier into the deception, leaving you constantly trying to figure out what's real and what's not. They also go back to slight-of-hand tricks which was one of my favorite parts of the first movie. Our producer, Gooch, told us he saw someone describe the movie as the baby of MI:1 and MI: Fallout and I think that is the perfect comp.
A worry I had for this movie was how it would work as a standalone. We've been weirdly bombarded with Part 1 major franchise movies recently (FastX, Spider-verse) and I was curious how this would work on it's own vs being part of a whole. That said, they did it perfectly. It wraps up real nice and gives you a sense of conclusion for the plot as it stood in that movie while also getting you pumped up for part 2.
I'll dive way deeper into it when we do a spoiler review on the pod but right now I have it ranked just behind Fallout. The reason being that Fallout's actual fight sequences were better and the movie itself was a little bit tighter. Which is not to say that this movie feels long. Even at 2.5 hours, I was begging for more at the end.