With Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, there are now a total of seven films in the Mission: Impossiblefranchise.  Counting this one, I think I have seen three, maybe four.  They all blur together into one long film full of action sequences and explosions.  This does not matter to most people.  I mean, look at how many Fast and Furious movies there are, so many that I have lost count, and I just saw one of them a few weeks ago.  When you have so many entries, does it really matter if you remember everything?  Well, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One probably wants this from you.  There are characters that I guess were in previous movies in the series who you are supposed to care about without any real sense of their importance to the main protagonist, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise).  But, forget all that, let us concentrate on Tom Cruise jumping a motorcycle off a mountain and parachuting onto a moving train.  Wheeeee!

Before we get to motorcycles and trains, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One begins under the sea.  Not Little Mermaid, but aboard a state-of-the-art Russian submarine called the Sevastopol.  If only I had the time to explain the political ramifications of such a name. . . .  Anyway, it supposedly has the ability to be invisible to any and all detection.  You can see where that might be an advantage for such a ship.  On board is the system that controls it, and the captain and his first mate each have two halves a key that allows them to access it.  You witness them doing this, attaching a device to it, and then sealing it back up before returning to the bridge.  Shortly thereafter they detect what they believe to be an American underwater vessel that somehow locates the Sevastopol and preemptively launches a torpedo at the Russians.  They get off their own just prior to the projectile striking their own submarine, only to have the expected detonation never occur and the American sub disappear off their sonar.  They believe they are safe for a few moments until their torpedo turns around and heads towards the Sevastopol, hitting and sinking it.  Among the bodies that rise to the surface of the Bering Sea are the two Russian sailors with the all-important key.  For the American government, whenever there is an, er, impossible mission, like retrieving said MacGuffin, they send Ethan Hunt and his team.  In the classic self-destructing message sent by the director of the Impossible Mission Force (IMF, which is rightly made fun of in this film), Eugene Kittridge (Henry Czerny) informs Ethan that his former . . . um, partner?  Lover?  Somebody, Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) anyway, has one half of the keys and is hiding out in the Arabian desert near Yemen.  She also has a sizable bounty on her head, but if he can get to her and obtain the objects in question, he can let her live.  Insert action set-piece number one of several here, taking place in the middle of a sand storm no less because, you know, desert.  Ethan is successful, but he does not yet know the purpose of the keys.  Thus, he disguises himself as an assistant to Eugene in order to gain access to a meeting of the American intelligence community to learn about this threat.  It is an artificial intelligence, the most powerful ever created.  Known as “The Entity,” all the governments of the world want control of it, not to mention a few unsavory individuals with ill designs.  The problem is that it is not keen on being controlled by anyone, so it is fighting back, making it dangerous to world peace, among other things.  Ethan has heard enough, knocking everyone out in the room but Eugene and telling his boss (and this is apparently a running gag in the franchise) that he is going rogue in order to destroy it.  The first move is to go to the airport in Abu Dhabi in order to find the person selling the other half of the key.  Ethan’s team are not the only ones aware of the location for this transaction, but he is the first to get to the seller.  She is a thief and con artist named Grace (Hayley Atwell), though she is not keen on the help he has to offer.  Also, Ethan’s band are not the only one who have come to the United Arab Emirates to obtain the key.  Also there is an old nemesis of Ethan’s, Gabriel (Esai Morales), a person Ethan thought dead.  He is working on behalf of The Entity.  Gabriel’s presence is noticed after Ethan’s men diffuse a potential bomb and manage to escape, following Grace to Rome.  Once more, Ethan is called upon to do the impossible, this time getting Grace away from Gabriel’s henchmen and the Italian police.  You would think she would be grateful, but no.  She leaves Ethan handcuffed to a subway train right before the car is struck by it.  Luckily, he has learned the location of where she plans to sell the key, this time being in Venice, and he is joined there by the rest of the team, including Ilsa.  The transaction is to take place at a party in Venice hosted by Alanna Mitsopolis (Vanessa Kirby), also known as the White Widow.  She has the other half of the key.  Guess who also crashes the party?  That is right, Gabriel.  Ethan tries to appeal to everyone there, especially Alanna.  Gabriel then walks away confident that everything will be brought to him and order his men to kill those remaining.  Predictably, everyone gets away, but run straight to Gabriel, though not intentionally.  Grace gets there first, taking a beating but retaining the key.  Ilsa dies protecting Grace, leaving a devastated Ethan to find her.  Feeling like this is all her fault for not trusting Ethan in the first place, Grace offers to join forces with Ethan and the rest.  This time they are to bring everything to Gabriel on the Orient Express.  Grace goes disguised as Alanna, and manages to make a deal with Eugene, who has apparently decided to take matters into his own hands.  There is also the aforementioned parachute scene, necessitated by the team’s mask making machine conveniently breaking down.  It also helps that Gabriel has rigged the train to prevent an easy access for such a stunt.  Gabriel’s efforts result in the famous locomotive plunging over a blown-up bridge, but not before Ethan gets away with the MacGuffin.

There are some details I left out in describing Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, which is understandable because the movie is nearly three hours long.  The plot is also thin, while also somehow managing to be convoluted at the same time.  For example, the two other members of Ethan’s team, Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg) and Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames) are there, but they do little.  Indeed, at one point Luther says he needs to go to do computer stuff, basically.  What that is, who knows?  He does say it is related to The Entity and its source code, which seems important, thus why I was frustrated with what amounts to a throwaway line in explaining why he leaves.  The main problem, though, as I alluded to before, is not fully understanding why some of these people are important to Ethan, mainly Ilsa.  I suppose the argument can be made that it is my fault for not remembering, or seeing, previous films.  At the same time, outside of an embrace in one of the most romantic places in the world, Venice, what justifies Luther giving Ethan a stern warning not to kill Gabriel out of vengeance?  The reason for these half-baked ideas also relates to another theme I have been drawing out here, and that is all people care about is action.  To be fair, there are some pretty tense moments and fun stunts.  If that is what you mostly want, then you probably enjoyed this movie.  As for me, I find that I get bored with too much action and need some plot to pace things a bit better.

There may have been an overkill of action in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, but it did have a moment or two that pleased this Catholic reviewer.  One of the more basic ideas in many films, and it is especially prevalent in these types, is the willingness of the hero to lay down his life for the sake of others.  I have talked about it, and Cameron has talked about it, so much so that I purposely try to find another topic to bring up in this portion of my reviews.  Yet, this one had one of the better testaments of sacrificial love I have heard or seen in a while.  As Jesus told us, there is no greater act one can do than to lay down one’s life for their friends.  Ethan almost says these exact words.  They come when Grace is offered the choice of joining the IMF.  He tells her that by doing so, her life will mean more to him than his own.  She protests, saying that he does not know her.  He responds by asking why that matters.  When Jesus told his disciples that he was willing to sacrifice Himself for them, by the spirit of adoption that is the foundation of the Church, He means all of us.  If He did not, then Christianity probably would not exist.  Though Ethan is speaking to the only real friends he has, he also means the entire world.  This is why he wants to destroy The Entity.  At the heart of this, like with Jesus, is a complete selflessness.  It is a model that we should all follow, no matter the format in which it is presented.

Before Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One began, there were two items of interest.  The second of these was Tom Cruise thanking us for being in the theater watching this movie.  He did this for Top Gun: Maverick (2022) as well.  Are you not confident in your films, Tom?  Anyway, the other was a moving commercial for a charity (the name of which escapes me, unfortunately) that brings first run films to kids who cannot make it to the cinema due to health limitations.  One of the things it said about this program is the ability of movies to heal.  I am not sure Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One accomplishes such a goal.  But, if you are in the mood for non-stop action, go for it.